🔗 Share this article

Attendees to Tate Modern are familiar to unusual encounters in its expansive Turbine Hall. They have relaxed under an simulated sun, descended down amusement rides, and observed automated jellyfish hovering through the air. Yet this marks the first time they will be venturing themselves in the detailed nasal cavities of a reindeer. The newest artist commission for this immense space—developed by Native Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—welcomes gallerygoers into a maze-like structure based on the scaled-up interior of a reindeer's nasal cavities. Inside, they can meander around or relax on pelts, tuning in on headphones to tribal seniors sharing tales and knowledge.

Why the Nose?

Why choose the nasal structure? It may seem whimsical, but the installation honors a little-known natural marvel: experts have found that in a fraction of a second, the reindeer's nose can raise the temperature of the ambient air it inhales by eighty degrees, allowing the animal to thrive in inhospitable Arctic temperatures. Expanding the nose to bigger than a person, Sara says, "creates a sense of insignificance that you as a individual are not superior over nature." She is a former journalist, children's author, and environmental activist, who hails from a pastoral family in the Norwegian Arctic. "Perhaps that fosters the potential to change your perspective or spark some modesty," she states.

A Celebration to Indigenous Heritage

The labyrinthine installation is one of several features in Sara's absorbing commission celebrating the heritage, understanding, and philosophy of the Sámi, Europe's only Indigenous people. Partially migratory, the Sámi total approximately 100,000 people distributed across the Norwegian north, Finland, the Swedish Lapland, and the Kola region (an region they call Sápmi). They've experienced oppression, integration policies, and repression of their tongue by all four countries. With an emphasis on the reindeer, an creature at the core of the Sámi belief system and origin tale, the installation also highlights the group's challenges relating to the climate crisis, land dispossession, and external control.

Meaning in Components

On the lengthy entrance incline, there's a looming, 26-meter formation of skins trapped by power and light cables. It represents a metaphor for the governance and financial structures restricting the Sámi. Partly a utility pole, part spiritual ascent, this component of the installation, called Goavve-, refers to the Sámi term for an severe climatic event, wherein dense sheets of ice form as fluctuating conditions melt and solidify again the snow, encasing the reindeers' key winter nourishment, lichen. The condition is a consequence of global heating, which is taking place up to much more rapidly in the Far North than elsewhere.

Three years ago, I visited Sara in Guovdageaidnu during a icy season and joined Sámi reindeer keepers on their Arctic vehicles in freezing temperatures as they carried containers of animal nutrition on to the wind-scoured Arctic plains to dispense through labor. The reindeer gathered round us, digging the slippery ground in futility for lichen-covered bits. This resource-intensive and laborious process is having a significant influence on herding practices—and on the animals' independence. Yet the other option is death. As these icy periods become frequent, reindeer are perishing—a number from hunger, others suffocating after plunging into streams through thinning ice sheets. On one level, the work is a tribute to them. "With the layering of materials, in a way I'm transporting the condition to London," says Sara.

Contrasting Worldviews

The installation also underscores the clear contrast between the western understanding of energy as a asset to be exploited for gain and existence and the Sámi worldview of energy as an innate essence in animals, people, and nature. This venue's legacy as a industrial facility is connected to this, as is what the Sámi consider eco-imperialism by Nordic countries. In their efforts to be standard bearers for clean sources, Scandinavian countries have clashed with the Sámi over the construction of turbine fields, hydroelectric dams, and mines on their traditional territory; the Sámi contend their human rights, ways of life, and culture are threatened. "It's hard being such a tiny group to stand your ground when the reasons are based on saving the world," Sara notes. "Extractivism has co-opted the discourse of sustainability, but yet it's just attempting to find more suitable ways to maintain patterns of use."

Individual Challenges

She and her family have themselves clashed with the state authorities over its increasingly stringent regulations on herding. In 2016, Sara's brother initiated a sequence of unsuccessful court actions over the forced culling of his herd, apparently to stop vegetation depletion. To back him, Sara developed a multi-year set of creations called Pile O'Sápmi comprising a colossal screen of 400 animal bones, which was exhibited at the the show Documenta 14 and later obtained by the national institution, where it is displayed in the entrance.

Creative Expression as Awareness

Among the community, creative work is the sole domain in which they can be understood by outsiders. Two years ago, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|