🔗 Share this article

Attendees to Tate Modern are accustomed to unexpected displays in its expansive Turbine Hall. They have relaxed under an man-made sun, descended down amusement rides, and seen automated jellyfish drifting through the air. But this marks the inaugural time they will be engaging themselves in the complex nasal chambers of a reindeer. The latest artistic project for this immense space—developed by Native Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—invites visitors into a winding design modeled after the expanded interior of a reindeer's nasal passages. Upon entering, they can meander around or relax on pelts, listening on earphones to tribal seniors imparting narratives and knowledge.

The Significance of the Nose

What's the focus on the nose? It might sound whimsical, but the artwork celebrates a rarely recognized scientific wonder: researchers have discovered that in a fraction of a second, the reindeer's nose can heat the surrounding air it breathes in by eighty degrees, allowing the creature to survive in extreme Arctic temperatures. Enlarging the nose to bigger than a person, Sara says, "generates a feeling of inferiority that you as a human being are not superior over nature." She is a former reporter, writer for kids, and rights advocate, who hails from a reindeer-herding family in northern Norway. "Perhaps that creates the chance to alter your perspective or trigger some humility," she states.

A Tribute to Traditional Ways

The maze-like design is among various elements in Sara's absorbing art project showcasing the traditions, science, and philosophy of the Sámi, Europe's only Indigenous people. Traditionally mobile, the Sámi total about 100,000 people distributed across the Norwegian north, Finland, Sweden, and the Kola region (an area they call Sápmi). They've experienced oppression, integration policies, and repression of their tongue by all four countries. Through highlighting the reindeer, an creature at the heart of the Sámi belief system and creation story, the work also spotlights the group's challenges relating to the climate crisis, land dispossession, and imperialism.

Meaning in Materials

On the lengthy access slope, there's a towering, 26-metre structure of skins ensnared by utility lines. It can be read as a symbol for the political and economic systems limiting the Sámi. Part pylon, part heavenly staircase, this component of the installation, named Goavve-, points to the Sámi name for an extreme weather phenomenon, whereby thick sheets of ice appear as varying weather melt and refreeze the snow, encasing the reindeers' primary cold-season nourishment, moss. Goavvi is a outcome of planetary warming, which is taking place up to four times faster in the Arctic than elsewhere.

Previously, I traveled to see Sara in the Norwegian far north during a severe cold period and accompanied Sámi pastoralists on their snowmobiles in biting cold as they hauled trailers of supplementary feed on to the exposed tundra to dispense by hand. These animals surrounded round us, pawing the frozen ground in vain attempts for lichen-covered morsels. This costly and labour-intensive process is having a severe effect on animal rearing—and on the animals' independence. But the choice is malnutrition. As goavvi winters become frequent, reindeer are succumbing—some from hunger, others suffocating after plunging into lakes and rivers through unstable frozen surfaces. On one level, the installation is a monument to them. "Through the stacking of components, in a way I'm introducing the condition to London," says Sara.

Contrasting Worldviews

This artwork also highlights the sharp difference between the western view of energy as a commodity to be harnessed for economic benefit and existence and the Sámi outlook of life force as an inherent power in animals, individuals, and the environment. The gallery's past as a coal and oil power station is connected to this, as is what the Sámi consider eco-imperialism by Nordic countries. As they strive to be standard bearers for renewable energy, Scandinavian countries have clashed with the Sámi over the building of turbine fields, river barriers, and digging operations on their traditional territory; the Sámi assert their human rights, livelihoods, and traditions are endangered. "It's challenging being such a small minority to protect your rights when the reasons are based on global sustainability," Sara observes. "Mining practices has co-opted the rhetoric of ecology, but yet it's just attempting to find more suitable ways to persist in habits of consumption."

Family Struggles

She and her kin have themselves clashed with the national administration over its ever-stricter policies on animal husbandry. In 2016, Sara's brother undertook a sequence of finally failed court actions over the mandatory slaughter of his livestock, ostensibly to stop vegetation depletion. As a show of solidarity, Sara created a multi-year series of pieces called Pile O'Sápmi comprising a massive curtain of numerous cranial remains, which was exhibited at the the event Documenta 14 and later obtained by the national institution, where it is displayed in the lobby.

Art as Awareness

Among the community, visual expression is the only realm in which they can be understood by outsiders. In 2022, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|