🔗 Share this article

Attendees to Tate Modern are accustomed to surprising displays in its vast Turbine Hall. They have relaxed under an man-made sun, descended down spiral slides, and witnessed AI-powered sea creatures floating through the air. However this marks the first time they will be venturing themselves in the detailed nose passages of a reindeer. The newest artistic project for this cavernous space—developed by Native Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—welcomes gallerygoers into a maze-like design modeled after the expanded interior of a reindeer's nasal airways. Inside, they can stroll around or relax on reindeer hides, listening on earphones to Sámi elders sharing narratives and knowledge.

The Significance of the Nose

Why choose the nasal structure? It may seem whimsical, but the installation honors a obscure scientific wonder: experts have uncovered that in a fraction of a second, the reindeer's nose can raise the temperature of the surrounding air it breathes in by 80 degrees celsius, helping the creature to endure in extreme Arctic temperatures. Enlarging the nose to bigger than a person, Sara explains, "produces a perception of smallness that you as a person are not dominant over nature." Sara is a ex- journalist, children's author, and environmental activist, who comes from a pastoral family in the Norwegian Arctic. "Perhaps that generates the chance to alter your outlook or spark some modesty," she states.

An Homage to Sámi Culture

The winding structure is part of a features in Sara's engaging art project celebrating the traditions, science, and worldview of the Sámi, Europe's only Indigenous people. Partially migratory, the Sámi total roughly 100,000 people distributed across the Norwegian north, Finland, Sweden, and the Russian Arctic (an area they call Sápmi). They have experienced discrimination, integration policies, and suppression of their dialect by all four states. With an emphasis on the reindeer, an creature at the heart of the Sámi belief system and founding narrative, the art also draws attention to the people's issues connected to the climate crisis, land dispossession, and colonialism.

Meaning in Materials

On the extended entry slope, there's a towering, eighty-five-foot formation of pelts trapped by power and light cables. It can be read as a metaphor for the political and economic systems limiting the Sámi. Part pylon, part heavenly staircase, this part of the installation, called Goavve-, refers to the Sámi word for an harsh environmental condition, in which solid coatings of ice develop as fluctuating conditions thaw and ice over the snow, encasing the reindeers' key cold-season food, fungus. This phenomenon is a consequence of global heating, which is happening up to much more rapidly in the Polar region than elsewhere.

Previously, I visited Sara in the Norwegian far north during a icy season and accompanied Sámi reindeer keepers on their motorized sleds in freezing temperatures as they hauled containers of animal nutrition on to the wind-scoured tundra to dispense manually. These animals crowded round us, scratching the frozen ground in vain attempts for vegetative morsels. This costly and labour-intensive method is having a severe effect on animal rearing—and on the animals' self-sufficiency. Yet the choice is starvation. As goavvi winters become frequent, reindeer are succumbing—some from hunger, others drowning after plunging into lakes and rivers through unstable frozen surfaces. In a sense, the art is a memorial to them. "With the layering of elements, in a way I'm transporting the goavvi to London," says Sara.

Opposing Worldviews

The sculpture also emphasizes the sharp difference between the western understanding of electricity as a commodity to be harnessed for gain and existence and the Sámi worldview of life force as an innate life force in creatures, individuals, and land. This venue's history as a industrial facility is tied up in this, as is what the Sámi consider green colonialism by Scandinavian states. As they strive to be leaders for renewable energy, Scandinavian countries have clashed with the Sámi over the development of windfarms, hydroelectric dams, and extraction sites on their traditional territory; the Sámi contend their human rights, ways of life, and traditions are threatened. "It's hard being such a small minority to stand your ground when the reasons are based on saving the world," Sara notes. "Resource exploitation has co-opted the rhetoric of environmentalism, but still it's just attempting to find better ways to persist in practices of use."

Personal Struggles

She and her relatives have themselves disagreed with the national administration over its increasingly stringent policies on animal husbandry. Previously, Sara's sibling embarked on a series of unsuccessful court actions over the forced culling of his herd, apparently to stop overgrazing. To back him, Sara produced a extended collection of pieces titled Pile O'Sápmi including a massive drape of four hundred reindeer skulls, which was exhibited at the the show Documenta 14 and later purchased by the National Museum of Oslo, where it resides in the entrance.

Creative Expression as Activism

For many Sámi, creative work seems the sole realm in which they can be understood by people of other nations. Two years ago, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|