🔗 Share this article

Visitors to Tate Modern are used to unusual displays in its expansive Turbine Hall. They have sunbathed under an man-made sun, glided down amusement rides, and observed automated jellyfish drifting through the air. Yet this marks the first time they will be immersing themselves in the complex nasal cavities of a reindeer. The newest creative installation for this huge space—designed by Native Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—encourages gallerygoers into a winding structure modeled after the enlarged interior of a reindeer's nose airways. Inside, they can stroll around or unwind on reindeer hides, listening on headphones to Sámi elders imparting tales and insights.

Focus on the Nasal Passages

Why choose the nasal structure? It might appear whimsical, but the artwork celebrates a rarely recognized biological feat: experts have uncovered that in less than one second, the reindeer's nose can raise the temperature of the surrounding air it inhales by 80 degrees celsius, enabling the creature to survive in harsh Arctic climates. Scaling the nose to human-scale dimensions, Sara says, "produces a sense of inferiority that you as a person are not superior over nature." The artist is a former journalist, writer for kids, and land defender, who is from a herding family in the far north of Norway. "Perhaps that generates the potential to change your outlook or evoke some humbleness," she adds.

An Homage to Indigenous Heritage

The labyrinthine installation is among various components in Sara's immersive art project honoring the heritage, understanding, and philosophy of the Sámi, the continent's original inhabitants. Partially migratory, the Sámi total approximately 100,000 people distributed across the Norwegian north, the Finnish Arctic, the Swedish Lapland, and the Russian Arctic (an region they call Sápmi). They've endured discrimination, forced assimilation, and suppression of their tongue by all four nations. Through highlighting the reindeer, an creature at the core of the Sámi belief system and founding narrative, the art also draws attention to the community's challenges relating to the environmental emergency, land dispossession, and colonialism.

Meaning in Elements

At the extended access incline, there's a looming, eighty-five-foot sculpture of reindeer hides ensnared by utility lines. It serves as a analogy for the governance and financial structures constraining the Sámi. Like an electrical tower, part heavenly staircase, this component of the installation, titled Goavve-, points to the Sámi word for an severe climatic event, in which dense sheets of ice develop as varying conditions thaw and ice over the snow, trapping the reindeers' primary winter food, moss. This phenomenon is a result of climate change, which is occurring up to four times faster in the Polar region than globally.

Three years ago, I met with Sara in Guovdageaidnu during a goavvi winter and accompanied Sámi pastoralists on their snowmobiles in biting cold as they transported containers of supplementary feed on to the barren Arctic plains to provide by hand. The herd surrounded round us, pawing the frozen ground in vain attempts for mossy morsels. This costly and labour-intensive procedure is having a significant effect on herding practices—and on the animals' independence. Yet the choice is malnutrition. When such conditions become frequent, reindeer are dying—a number from lack of food, others drowning after sinking in water bodies through prematurely melting ice. On one level, the work is a tribute to them. "With the layering of elements, in a way I'm bringing the phenomenon to London," says Sara.

Contrasting Belief Systems

This artwork also emphasizes the sharp divergence between the industrial interpretation of electricity as a resource to be exploited for profit and livelihood and the Sámi outlook of vitality as an inherent essence in creatures, humans, and nature. This venue's past as a fossil fuel plant is connected to this, as is what the Sámi consider environmental exploitation by regional governments. While attempting to be leaders for renewable energy, Scandinavian countries have disagreed with the Sámi over the construction of wind energy projects, river barriers, and digging operations on their traditional territory; the Sámi argue their legal protections, ways of life, and way of life are at risk. "It's challenging being such a limited population to defend yourself when the reasons are rooted in global sustainability," Sara observes. "Resource exploitation has adopted the language of ecology, but nonetheless it's just attempting to find alternative ways to maintain habits of expenditure."

Individual Conflicts

Sara and her family have themselves clashed with the national administration over its tightening policies on herding. In 2016, Sara's sibling initiated a sequence of unsuccessful lawsuits over the forced culling of his herd, ostensibly to stop overgrazing. As a show of solidarity, Sara created a extended set of pieces called Pile O'Sápmi featuring a colossal drape of 400 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 lobby.

Creative Expression as Activism

Among the community, visual expression appears the only domain in which they can be understood by outsiders. Recently, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|