🔗 Share this article

Attendees to the renowned gallery are familiar to unexpected displays in its vast Turbine Hall. They have basked under an man-made sun, glided down helter skelters, and seen automated jellyfish hovering through the air. Yet this marks the inaugural time they will be immersing themselves in the complex nose cavities of a reindeer. The newest artistic project for this immense space—created by Native Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—welcomes gallerygoers into a winding design modeled after the scaled-up interior of a reindeer's nasal airways. Once inside, they can stroll around or unwind on reindeer hides, listening on headphones to tribal seniors telling narratives and knowledge.

Why the Nose?

Why choose the nasal structure? It may seem playful, but the artwork celebrates a little-known scientific wonder: scientists have found that in less than one second, the reindeer's nose can heat the incoming air it breathes in by 80°C, allowing the creature to thrive in inhospitable Arctic conditions. Scaling the nose to larger than human size, Sara notes, "produces a perception of smallness that you as a individual are not in control over nature." She is a ex- reporter, writer for kids, and environmental activist, who hails from a reindeer-herding family in the Norwegian Arctic. "Maybe that creates the chance to shift your viewpoint or trigger some humbleness," she continues.

A Celebration to Indigenous Heritage

The labyrinthine design is part of a elements in Sara's absorbing exhibition honoring the culture, understanding, and philosophy of the Sámi, the sole native group in Europe. Semi-nomadic, the Sámi count approximately 100,000 people distributed across northern Norway, Finland, the Swedish Lapland, and the Kola region (an region they call Sápmi). They've experienced oppression, integration policies, and suppression of their language by all four countries. Through highlighting the reindeer, an animal at the center of the Sámi mythology and creation story, the art also spotlights the community's issues connected to the environmental emergency, loss of territory, and external control.

Symbolism in Components

On the lengthy entrance ramp, there's a looming, 26-meter structure of skins trapped by electrical wires. It can be read as a metaphor for the political and economic systems limiting the Sámi. Partly a utility pole, part heavenly staircase, this component of the exhibit, titled Goavve-, refers to the Sámi name for an harsh environmental condition, whereby thick sheets of ice develop as fluctuating conditions thaw and refreeze the snow, encasing the reindeers' main cold-season nourishment, fungus. This phenomenon is a consequence of planetary warming, which is taking place up to four times faster in the Far North than in other regions.

A few years back, I traveled to see Sara in Guovdageaidnu during a icy season and went with Sámi reindeer keepers on their Arctic vehicles in biting cold as they transported carts of supplementary feed on to the wind-scoured tundra to dispense manually. These animals crowded round us, pawing the slippery ground in futility for mossy pieces. This costly and laborious procedure is having a significant effect on reindeer husbandry—and on the animals' self-sufficiency. However the choice is starvation. When such conditions become routine, reindeer are succumbing—some from hunger, others submerging after plunging into lakes and rivers through prematurely melting ice. To some extent, the work is a tribute to them. "With the layering of components, in a way I'm bringing the phenomenon to London," says Sara.

Opposing Belief Systems

The installation also underscores the stark difference between the modern understanding of energy as a asset to be harnessed for gain and existence and the Sámi philosophy of life force as an natural essence in animals, people, and land. Tate Modern's past as a coal and oil power station is tied up in this, as is what the Sámi see as environmental exploitation by regional governments. As they strive to be standard bearers for clean sources, these states have clashed with the Sámi over the building of turbine fields, hydroelectric dams, and digging operations on their traditional territory; the Sámi assert their legal protections, ways of life, and way of life are at risk. "It's hard being such a small minority to protect your rights when the justifications are grounded in environmental protection," Sara notes. "Extractivism has adopted the language of ecology, but still it's just attempting to find more suitable ways to persist in practices of consumption."

Family Conflicts

Sara and her kin have personally clashed with the national administration over its ever-stricter rules on reindeer management. In 2016, Sara's sibling undertook a sequence of unsuccessful court actions over the required reduction of his animals, apparently to stop vegetation depletion. As a show of solidarity, Sara produced a extended collection of creations called Pile O'Sápmi including a colossal screen of four hundred animal bones, which was shown at the 2017's show Documenta 14 and later obtained by the national institution, where it resides in the lobby.

The Role of Art in Activism

For many Sámi, creative work appears the only domain in which they can be understood by the global community. Recently, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|