🔗 Share this article

Guests to Tate Modern are accustomed to unusual encounters in its vast Turbine Hall. They've sunbathed under an man-made sun, glided down spiral slides, and seen robotic sea creatures drifting through the air. However this marks the first time they will be venturing themselves in the complex nose passages of a reindeer. The latest creative installation for this huge space—developed by Indigenous Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—invites visitors into a labyrinthine structure inspired by the enlarged inside of a reindeer's nose airways. Inside, they can stroll around or relax on reindeer hides, listening on headphones to community leaders telling narratives and knowledge.

Focus on the Nasal Passages

Why the nose? It could appear playful, but the exhibit honors a little-known scientific wonder: experts have discovered that in a fraction of a second, the reindeer's nose can heat the ambient air it takes in by eighty degrees, helping the animal to survive in inhospitable Arctic climates. Enlarging the nose to bigger than a person, Sara notes, "generates a feeling of insignificance that you as a individual are not in control over nature." She is a ex- journalist, writer for kids, and rights advocate, who is from a pastoral family in the Norwegian Arctic. "Possibly that creates the possibility to alter your outlook or trigger some humbleness," she continues.

A Celebration to Traditional Ways

The maze-like installation is among various components in Sara's immersive commission honoring the heritage, science, and beliefs of the Sámi, the continent's original inhabitants. Semi-nomadic, the Sámi count roughly 100,000 people spread across the Norwegian north, the Finnish Arctic, Sweden, and Russia's Kola Peninsula (an territory they call Sápmi). They have experienced discrimination, cultural suppression, and eradication of their tongue by all four countries. Through highlighting the reindeer, an animal at the core of the Sámi mythology and founding narrative, the installation also spotlights the community's struggles associated with the climate crisis, land dispossession, and external control.

Meaning in Materials

At the extended entry incline, there's a soaring, 26-meter formation of pelts ensnared by utility lines. It serves as a analogy for the societal frameworks limiting the Sámi. Part pylon, part heavenly staircase, this component of the artwork, called Goavve-, relates to the Sámi term for an harsh environmental condition, in which solid layers of ice develop as changing conditions liquefy and refreeze the snow, trapping the reindeers' primary cold-season nourishment, lichen. This phenomenon is a outcome of planetary warming, which is happening up to at an accelerated rate in the Far North than globally.

Three years ago, I traveled to see Sara in Guovdageaidnu during a icy season and went with Sámi herders on their Arctic vehicles in chilly conditions as they carried containers of animal nutrition on to the exposed Arctic plains to distribute through labor. The reindeer surrounded round us, digging the frozen ground in futility for lichen-covered bits. This expensive and labour-intensive process is having a drastic impact on reindeer husbandry—and on the animals' self-sufficiency. But the choice is malnutrition. As goavvi winters become commonplace, reindeer are perishing—a number from lack of food, others submerging after plunging into lakes and rivers through unstable frozen surfaces. In a sense, the art is a monument to them. "With the layering of components, in a way I'm bringing the phenomenon to London," says Sara.

Diverging Worldviews

The installation also underscores the clear contrast between the modern interpretation of electricity as a commodity to be harnessed for profit and survival and the Sámi worldview of life force as an natural life force in animals, humans, and the environment. Tate Modern's past as a coal and oil power station is tied up in this, as is what the Sámi view as green colonialism by Nordic countries. As they strive to be leaders for sustainable power, Nordic nations have clashed with the Sámi over the construction of windfarms, river barriers, and mines on their native soil; the Sámi assert their legal protections, livelihoods, and culture are endangered. "It's challenging being such a limited population to stand your ground when the arguments are rooted in saving the world," Sara observes. "Resource exploitation has appropriated the language of sustainability, but nonetheless it's just attempting to find alternative ways to persist in practices of consumption."

Family Struggles

She and her kin have personally disagreed with the Norwegian government over its tightening regulations on herding. A few years ago, Sara's sibling embarked on a series of unsuccessful legal cases over the forced culling of his animals, apparently to stop vegetation depletion. In support, Sara developed a extended collection of pieces titled Pile O'Sápmi including a huge screen of 400 cranial remains, which was shown at the 2017 show Documenta 14 and later obtained by the public gallery, where it is displayed in the entryway.

Art as Awareness

For numerous Indigenous people, visual expression is the only realm in which they can be heard by the global community. In 2022, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|