🔗 Share this article

Visitors to Tate Modern are used to surprising experiences in its spacious Turbine Hall. They have relaxed under an artificial sun, slid down helter skelters, and seen AI-powered sea creatures hovering through the air. Yet this marks the first time they will be venturing themselves in the complex nasal chambers of a reindeer. The current artistic project for this cavernous space—developed by Native Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—welcomes patrons into a winding structure modeled after the enlarged interior of a reindeer's nasal passages. Inside, they can meander around or relax on reindeer hides, listening on earphones to tribal seniors imparting tales and knowledge.

The Significance of the Nose

Why the nose? It could seem playful, but the installation pays tribute to a obscure biological feat: scientists have uncovered that in a fraction of a second, the reindeer's nose can raise the temperature of the ambient air it breathes in by 80°C, allowing the creature to endure in extreme Arctic conditions. Scaling the nose to larger than human size, Sara explains, "creates a feeling of inferiority that you as a individual are not in control over nature." She is a ex- reporter, young adult author, and land defender, who comes from a reindeer-herding family in northern Norway. "Perhaps that generates the potential to change your outlook or evoke some humility," she states.

An Homage to Indigenous Heritage

The maze-like design is one of several elements in Sara's immersive art project celebrating the heritage, science, and philosophy of the Sámi, the continent's original inhabitants. Semi-nomadic, the Sámi number about 100,000 people spread across the Norwegian north, the Finnish Arctic, the Swedish Lapland, and the Kola region (an region they call Sápmi). They have faced discrimination, integration policies, and repression of their tongue by all four countries. By focusing on the reindeer, an creature at the center of the Sámi cosmology and creation story, the work also spotlights the community's issues relating to the global warming, property rights, and external control.

Metaphor in Materials

On the extended access ramp, there's a towering, eighty-five-foot formation of reindeer hides trapped by utility lines. It serves as a symbol for the political and economic systems restricting the Sámi. Like an electrical tower, part spiritual ascent, this part of the exhibit, called Goavve-, points to the Sámi term for an extreme weather phenomenon, whereby dense layers of ice develop as fluctuating weather liquefy and solidify again the snow, encasing the reindeers' primary cold-season food, fungus. This phenomenon is a result of climate change, which is happening up to much more rapidly in the Arctic than elsewhere.

Previously, I met with Sara in the Norwegian far north during a severe cold period and accompanied Sámi pastoralists on their Arctic vehicles in freezing temperatures as they transported carts of animal nutrition on to the barren Arctic plains to dispense through labor. The herd surrounded round us, pawing the frozen ground in vain for vegetative pieces. This expensive and laborious method is having a drastic influence on animal rearing—and on the animals' independence. However the alternative is starvation. As these icy periods become routine, reindeer are succumbing—some from lack of food, others drowning after falling into lakes and rivers through thinning ice sheets. In a sense, the work is a monument to them. "By overlapping of components, in a way I'm introducing the condition to London," says Sara.

Contrasting Belief Systems

The sculpture also underscores the stark contrast between the modern interpretation of power as a resource to be harnessed for profit and livelihood and the Sámi philosophy of life force as an innate life force in creatures, people, and nature. Tate Modern's past as a industrial facility is connected to this, as is what the Sámi view as eco-imperialism by Nordic countries. In their efforts to be standard bearers for sustainable power, these states have clashed with the Sámi over the building of wind energy projects, hydroelectric dams, and extraction sites on their traditional territory; the Sámi contend their legal protections, incomes, and traditions are at risk. "It's challenging being such a small minority to protect your rights when the reasons are based on environmental protection," Sara comments. "Resource exploitation has co-opted the rhetoric of sustainability, but yet it's just aiming to find alternative ways to persist in patterns of expenditure."

Family Conflicts

The artist and her kin have themselves conflicted with the state authorities over its tightening regulations on herding. In 2016, Sara's sibling initiated a set of finally failed lawsuits over the forced culling of his livestock, ostensibly to stop overgrazing. As a show of solidarity, Sara created a multi-year series of creations called Pile O'Sápmi including a colossal drape of numerous animal bones, which was displayed at the 2017's event Documenta 14 and later acquired by the national institution, where it resides in the lobby.

The Role of Art in Advocacy

Among the community, visual expression is the sole domain in which they can be listened to by the global community. Two years ago, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|