🔗 Share this article

Attendees to Tate Modern are accustomed to unusual experiences in its spacious Turbine Hall. They've basked under an man-made sun, glided down spiral slides, and seen AI-powered jellyfish floating through the air. But this marks the inaugural time they will be immersing themselves in the intricate nasal passages of a reindeer. The current artistic project for this huge space—created by Native Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—welcomes gallerygoers into a winding design based on the enlarged interior of a reindeer's nasal cavities. Upon entering, they can wander around or relax on reindeer hides, listening on earphones to tribal seniors telling stories and insights.

Focus on the Nasal Passages

Why choose the nasal structure? It might seem playful, but the installation celebrates a little-known natural marvel: experts have found that in a fraction of a second, the reindeer's nose can warm the surrounding air it takes in by 80°C, allowing the animal to survive in inhospitable Arctic temperatures. Expanding the nose to bigger than a person, Sara notes, "generates a sense of insignificance that you as a human being are not superior over nature." Sara is a ex- writer, writer for kids, and environmental activist, who hails from a pastoral family in northern Norway. "Possibly that creates the potential to alter your perspective or evoke some humility," she states.

An Homage to Traditional Ways

The labyrinthine design is one of several components in Sara's engaging exhibition showcasing the heritage, understanding, and beliefs of the Sámi, the continent's original inhabitants. Partially migratory, the Sámi total roughly 100,000 people distributed across the Norwegian north, Finland, Sweden, and Russia's Kola Peninsula (an region they call Sápmi). They've endured oppression, integration policies, and eradication of their language by all four countries. Through highlighting the reindeer, an creature at the center of the Sámi belief system and creation story, the work also highlights the group's challenges relating to the global warming, property rights, and colonialism.

Symbolism in Components

At the extended entry slope, there's a looming, 26-metre sculpture of reindeer hides entangled by power and light cables. It serves as a analogy for the societal frameworks constraining the Sámi. Partly a utility pole, part celestial ladder, this part of the artwork, titled Goavve-, refers to the Sámi word for an severe climatic event, whereby dense layers of ice appear as changing temperatures melt and solidify again the snow, locking in the reindeers' primary cold-season food, moss. This phenomenon is a result of climate change, which is happening up to four times faster in the Polar region than in other regions.

Previously, I met with Sara in Guovdageaidnu during a goavvi winter and went with Sámi pastoralists on their snowmobiles in biting cold as they transported carts of food pellets on to the wind-scoured Arctic plains to dispense through labor. The reindeer crowded round us, pawing the slippery ground in futility for lichen-covered pieces. This costly and demanding process is having a significant impact on animal rearing—and on the animals' self-sufficiency. However the alternative is starvation. As these icy periods become routine, reindeer are dying—a number from hunger, others drowning after falling into water bodies through prematurely melting ice. On one level, the art is a memorial to them. "With the layering of elements, in a way I'm bringing the condition to London," says Sara.

Diverging Worldviews

This artwork also highlights the sharp difference between the modern interpretation of energy as a commodity to be utilized for economic benefit and existence and the Sámi philosophy of energy as an inherent power in animals, people, and land. The gallery's past as a coal and oil power station is linked with this, as is what the Sámi see as green colonialism by Scandinavian states. As they strive to be standard bearers for clean sources, Scandinavian countries have clashed with the Sámi over the construction of windfarms, hydroelectric dams, and extraction sites on their traditional territory; the Sámi assert their legal protections, ways of life, and way of life are threatened. "It's very difficult being such a tiny group to protect your rights when the justifications are rooted in saving the world," Sara notes. "Resource exploitation has appropriated the language of environmentalism, but yet it's just aiming to find better ways to persist in patterns of consumption."

Family Conflicts

Sara and her relatives have themselves clashed with the state authorities over its tightening policies on animal husbandry. In 2016, Sara's sibling embarked on a series of ultimately unsuccessful lawsuits over the forced culling of his animals, supposedly to stop vegetation depletion. To back him, Sara developed a extended collection of creations called Pile O'Sápmi including a huge drape of numerous cranial remains, which was exhibited at the the event Documenta 14 and later obtained by the National Museum of Oslo, where it is displayed in the entryway.

The Role of Art in Activism

For numerous Indigenous people, creative work seems the exclusive domain in which they can be understood by the global community. In 2022, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|