🔗 Share this article

Visitors to the renowned gallery are used to unusual experiences in its spacious Turbine Hall. They've sunbathed under an artificial sun, glided down spiral slides, and seen AI-powered jellyfish floating through the air. But this marks the first time they will be engaging themselves in the intricate nasal chambers of a reindeer. The latest artist commission for this cavernous space—developed by Indigenous Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—encourages gallerygoers into a labyrinthine structure modeled after the scaled-up inside of a reindeer's nose cavities. Upon entering, they can wander around or relax on pelts, listening on headphones to tribal seniors imparting narratives and insights.

The Significance of the Nose

Why the nose? It may sound quirky, but the artwork celebrates a obscure biological feat: scientists have found that in less than one second, the reindeer's nose can heat the incoming air it breathes in by eighty degrees, helping the animal to survive in harsh Arctic conditions. Enlarging the nose to bigger than a person, Sara notes, "generates a perception of inferiority that you as a human being are not in control over nature." The artist is a ex- writer, children's author, and environmental activist, who comes from a reindeer-herding family in the far north of Norway. "Possibly that generates the chance to shift your perspective or trigger some humility," she continues.

An Homage to Sámi Culture

The labyrinthine design is part of a features in Sara's immersive commission showcasing the traditions, understanding, and worldview of the Sámi, the continent's original inhabitants. Partially migratory, the Sámi count approximately 100,000 people spread across the Norwegian north, the Finnish Arctic, the Swedish Lapland, and the Kola region (an territory they call Sápmi). They have experienced discrimination, cultural suppression, and repression of their dialect by all four nations. With an emphasis on the reindeer, an creature at the center of the Sámi cosmology and origin tale, the work also highlights the group's challenges connected to the environmental emergency, land dispossession, and external control.

Metaphor in Materials

At the lengthy access slope, there's a soaring, 26-meter structure of pelts ensnared by power and light cables. It serves as a symbol for the political and economic systems restricting the Sámi. Partly a utility pole, part celestial ladder, this part of the exhibit, titled Goavve-, refers to the Sámi term for an harsh environmental condition, whereby thick coatings of ice form as varying conditions melt and refreeze the snow, trapping the reindeers' primary winter food, moss. This phenomenon is a consequence of global heating, which is occurring up to much more rapidly in the Arctic than in other regions.

A few years back, I visited Sara in a remote town during a icy season and went with Sámi reindeer keepers on their Arctic vehicles in chilly conditions as they hauled trailers of supplementary feed on to the exposed tundra to distribute by hand. These animals gathered round us, digging the slippery ground in futility for vegetative bits. This resource-intensive and labour-intensive method is having a drastic impact on animal rearing—and on the animals' independence. But the choice is starvation. As goavvi winters become routine, reindeer are dying—a number from lack of food, others submerging after sinking in streams through thinning ice sheets. In a sense, the art is a tribute to them. "With the layering of materials, in a way I'm transporting the goavvi to London," says Sara.

Diverging Belief Systems

The installation also emphasizes the stark contrast between the industrial view of energy as a commodity to be harnessed for profit and existence and the Sámi philosophy of energy as an innate essence in creatures, humans, and land. Tate Modern's history as a coal and oil power station is linked with this, as is what the Sámi see as green colonialism by Scandinavian states. While attempting to be exemplars for sustainable power, Nordic nations have clashed with the Sámi over the construction of wind energy projects, hydroelectric dams, and mines on their traditional territory; the Sámi contend their fundamental freedoms, incomes, and way of life are threatened. "It's challenging being such a small minority to stand your ground when the arguments are based on saving the world," Sara comments. "Mining practices has adopted the language of sustainability, but yet it's just aiming to find alternative ways to continue patterns of consumption."

Family Struggles

Sara and her family have personally clashed with the state authorities over its increasingly stringent regulations on reindeer management. In 2016, Sara's sibling undertook a sequence of ultimately unsuccessful legal cases over the mandatory slaughter of his herd, supposedly to stop vegetation depletion. To back him, Sara produced a multi-year series of pieces named Pile O'Sápmi comprising a colossal drape of numerous cranial remains, which was exhibited at the 2017 art exhibition Documenta 14 and later acquired by the National Museum of Oslo, where it hangs in the entryway.

The Role of Art in Activism

For many Sámi, visual expression is the exclusive domain in which they can be understood by the global community. Recently, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|