🔗 Share this article

Guests to Tate Modern are accustomed to unusual experiences in its expansive Turbine Hall. They've relaxed under an artificial sun, glided down spiral slides, and observed AI-powered jellyfish drifting through the air. Yet this marks the inaugural time they will be immersing themselves in the intricate nose cavities of a reindeer. The latest artistic project for this huge space—designed by Indigenous Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—encourages visitors into a winding design inspired by the scaled-up interior of a reindeer's nose passages. Inside, they can meander around or relax on pelts, listening on earphones to Sámi elders imparting tales and knowledge.

Focus on the Nasal Passages

What's the focus on the nose? It may sound playful, but the exhibit honors a obscure scientific wonder: experts have found that in a fraction of a second, the reindeer's nose can raise the temperature of the incoming air it breathes in by 80 degrees celsius, helping the creature to thrive in extreme Arctic temperatures. Scaling the nose to bigger than a person, Sara says, "generates a sense of inferiority that you as a person are not in control over nature." The artist is a former reporter, young adult author, and environmental activist, who comes from a herding family in the Norwegian Arctic. "Perhaps that fosters the possibility to alter your viewpoint or spark some humbleness," she adds.

A Celebration to Sámi Culture

The maze-like installation is among various elements in Sara's absorbing commission showcasing the traditions, science, and philosophy of the Sámi, the sole native group in Europe. Traditionally mobile, the Sámi number roughly 100,000 people ranged across northern Norway, Finland, the Swedish Lapland, and the Russian Arctic (an territory they call Sápmi). They have experienced persecution, forced assimilation, and eradication of their dialect by all four states. Through highlighting the reindeer, an creature at the center of the Sámi mythology and creation story, the art also draws attention to the community's struggles relating to the climate crisis, loss of territory, and colonialism.

Meaning in Materials

At the lengthy entry incline, there's a soaring, 26-metre structure of pelts entangled by electrical wires. It represents a analogy for the societal frameworks limiting the Sámi. Like an electrical tower, part spiritual ascent, this part of the exhibit, named Goavve-, relates to the Sámi term for an extreme weather phenomenon, in which solid coatings of ice develop as changing temperatures thaw and refreeze the snow, locking in the reindeers' primary winter food, lichen. Goavvi is a result of climate change, which is happening up to at an accelerated rate in the Arctic than elsewhere.

A few years back, I traveled to see Sara in the Norwegian far north during a goavvi winter and joined Sámi reindeer keepers on their snowmobiles in biting cold as they hauled containers of food pellets on to the exposed frozen landscape to provide by hand. The herd surrounded round us, digging the icy ground in futility for vegetative morsels. This expensive and laborious procedure is having a severe influence on reindeer husbandry—and on the animals' natural survival. But the alternative is starvation. As these icy periods become routine, reindeer are succumbing—some from hunger, others submerging after falling into lakes and rivers through thinning ice sheets. To some extent, the installation is a tribute to them. "Through the stacking of elements, in a way I'm introducing the phenomenon to London," says Sara.

Diverging Belief Systems

The installation also emphasizes the sharp difference between the industrial interpretation of power as a resource to be utilized for economic benefit and survival and the Sámi worldview of energy as an natural power in animals, individuals, and nature. Tate Modern's legacy as a fossil fuel plant is linked with this, as is what the Sámi see as environmental exploitation by Scandinavian states. As they strive to be standard bearers for clean sources, Nordic nations have locked horns with the Sámi over the building of turbine fields, river barriers, and extraction sites on their native soil; the Sámi argue their fundamental freedoms, ways of life, and culture are at risk. "It's challenging being such a tiny group to defend yourself when the justifications are based on saving the world," Sara comments. "Resource exploitation has adopted the language of environmentalism, but nonetheless it's just attempting to find better ways to maintain patterns of use."

Personal Struggles

The artist and her relatives have personally disagreed with the national administration over its ever-stricter policies on herding. In 2016, Sara's brother initiated a set of ultimately unsuccessful legal cases over the required reduction of his livestock, supposedly to stop excessive feeding. In support, Sara produced a extended set of pieces called Pile O'Sápmi featuring a colossal curtain of 400 animal bones, which was shown at the 2017's show Documenta 14 and later obtained by the National Museum of Oslo, where it hangs in the entrance.

Art as Awareness

For numerous Indigenous people, visual expression is the sole domain in which they can be listened to by people of other nations. In 2022, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|