🔗 Share this article

Guests to the renowned gallery are familiar to surprising displays in its expansive Turbine Hall. They've sunbathed under an artificial sun, descended down helter skelters, and observed AI-powered jellyfish floating through the air. Yet this marks the initial time they will be venturing themselves in the detailed nasal cavities of a reindeer. The newest artist commission for this cavernous space—designed by Native Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—invites patrons into a winding structure inspired by the enlarged inside of a reindeer's nasal airways. Once inside, they can stroll around or relax on pelts, listening on headphones to tribal seniors telling stories and insights.

Why the Nose?

What's the focus on the nose? It may appear whimsical, but the installation pays tribute to a rarely recognized scientific wonder: researchers have found that in less than one second, the reindeer's nose can heat the incoming air it takes in by 80°C, enabling the animal to endure in inhospitable Arctic conditions. Enlarging the nose to larger than human size, Sara explains, "produces a perception of insignificance that you as a human being are not dominant over nature." Sara is a ex- reporter, young adult author, and land defender, who comes from a reindeer-herding family in the far north of Norway. "Perhaps that fosters the potential to shift your viewpoint or evoke some modesty," she adds.

A Celebration to Indigenous Heritage

The winding installation is one of several components in Sara's engaging art project honoring the traditions, understanding, and philosophy of the Sámi, the continent's original inhabitants. Semi-nomadic, the Sámi number approximately 100,000 people ranged across northern Norway, the Finnish Arctic, the Swedish Lapland, and Russia's Kola Peninsula (an territory they call Sápmi). They have experienced persecution, cultural suppression, and eradication of their dialect by all four nations. With an emphasis on the reindeer, an animal at the center of the Sámi mythology and creation story, the art also spotlights the group's struggles relating to the global warming, property rights, and imperialism.

Meaning in Components

Along the lengthy access ramp, there's a soaring, 26-meter structure of skins trapped by utility lines. It serves as a analogy for the societal frameworks constraining the Sámi. Partly a utility pole, part heavenly staircase, this section of the artwork, named Goavve-, refers to the Sámi name for an severe climatic event, wherein solid layers of ice appear as varying weather thaw and ice over the snow, trapping the reindeers' key winter food, fungus. This phenomenon is a result of global heating, which is taking place up to at an accelerated rate in the Far North than elsewhere.

Three years ago, I traveled to see Sara in a remote town during a icy season and accompanied Sámi herders on their motorized sleds in freezing temperatures as they hauled containers of supplementary feed on to the exposed Arctic plains to dispense manually. These animals gathered round us, digging the icy ground in vain attempts for vegetative pieces. This resource-intensive and laborious process is having a significant impact on animal rearing—and on the animals' self-sufficiency. However the choice is death. As goavvi winters become frequent, reindeer are succumbing—a number from starvation, others drowning after plunging into streams through prematurely melting ice. In a sense, the installation is a monument to them. "Through the stacking of components, in a way I'm bringing the goavvi to London," says Sara.

Contrasting Perspectives

The sculpture also underscores the sharp difference between the western view of power as a asset to be exploited for gain and survival and the Sámi outlook of vitality as an natural life force in creatures, humans, and land. Tate Modern's history as a coal and oil power station is connected to this, as is what the Sámi consider environmental exploitation by Nordic countries. As they strive to be leaders for sustainable power, Scandinavian countries have clashed with the Sámi over the construction of windfarms, hydroelectric dams, and digging operations on their ancestral land; the Sámi contend their legal protections, livelihoods, and culture are threatened. "It's hard being such a small minority to defend yourself when the justifications are grounded in environmental protection," Sara notes. "Extractivism has co-opted the rhetoric of ecology, but nonetheless it's just attempting to find better ways to maintain habits of consumption."

Family Struggles

She and her kin have personally conflicted with the national administration over its increasingly stringent rules on reindeer management. Previously, Sara's brother embarked on a set of unsuccessful lawsuits over the required reduction of his herd, supposedly to stop excessive feeding. To back him, Sara produced a extended collection of creations titled Pile O'Sápmi including a colossal screen of 400 cranial remains, which was exhibited at the the event Documenta 14 and later acquired by the national institution, where it is displayed in the entryway.

Creative Expression as Activism

Among the community, creative work appears the sole domain in which they can be heard by the global community. In 2022, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|