🔗 Share this article

Guests to Tate Modern are used to unexpected experiences in its expansive Turbine Hall. They have sunbathed under an artificial sun, glided down amusement rides, and witnessed robotic jellyfish drifting through the air. However this marks the inaugural time they will be venturing themselves in the detailed nose chambers of a reindeer. The current artistic project for this huge space—developed by Indigenous Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—encourages gallerygoers into a winding design inspired by the expanded interior of a reindeer's nasal airways. Once inside, they can stroll around or relax on reindeer hides, tuning in on earphones to community leaders telling stories and knowledge.

Why the Nose?

Why the nose? It might appear quirky, but the exhibit celebrates a obscure scientific wonder: researchers have found that in a fraction of a second, the reindeer's nose can raise the temperature of the ambient air it breathes in by 80 degrees celsius, enabling the creature to survive in harsh Arctic conditions. Scaling the nose to larger than human size, Sara notes, "creates a perception of smallness that you as a individual are not dominant over nature." She is a former reporter, young adult author, and environmental activist, who comes from a pastoral family in the Norwegian Arctic. "Possibly that creates the potential to shift your outlook or trigger some humility," she adds.

A Tribute to Traditional Ways

The winding design is part of a elements in Sara's immersive art project showcasing the traditions, knowledge, and beliefs of the Sámi, the continent's original inhabitants. Semi-nomadic, the Sámi number about 100,000 people spread across northern Norway, the Finnish Arctic, Sweden, and Russia's Kola Peninsula (an area they call Sápmi). They've endured discrimination, integration policies, and eradication of their language by all four nations. With an emphasis on the reindeer, an animal at the center of the Sámi mythology and creation story, the work also spotlights the people's struggles relating to the environmental emergency, property rights, and imperialism.

Meaning in Elements

Along the extended entrance incline, there's a towering, eighty-five-foot formation of skins trapped by electrical wires. It represents a symbol for the governance and financial structures restricting the Sámi. Part pylon, part spiritual ascent, this section of the artwork, called Goavve-, refers to the Sámi name for an severe climatic event, wherein thick sheets of ice develop as varying temperatures melt and ice over the snow, trapping the reindeers' main cold-season food, moss. The condition is a result of planetary warming, which is taking place up to much more rapidly in the Polar region than globally.

Three years ago, I traveled to see Sara in the Norwegian far north during a icy season and accompanied Sámi pastoralists on their motorized sleds in biting cold as they carried carts of supplementary feed on to the barren frozen landscape to distribute by hand. The reindeer crowded round us, scratching the icy ground in futility for lichen-covered morsels. This costly and laborious process is having a severe impact on reindeer husbandry—and on the animals' independence. However the alternative is malnutrition. As goavvi winters become routine, reindeer are succumbing—some from starvation, others suffocating after plunging into streams through prematurely melting ice. In a sense, the work is a memorial to them. "With the layering of materials, in a way I'm introducing the goavvi to London," says Sara.

Opposing Perspectives

The installation also emphasizes the sharp contrast between the western understanding of power as a asset to be utilized for profit and livelihood and the Sámi philosophy of energy as an inherent essence in creatures, individuals, and land. The gallery's history as a coal and oil power station is connected to this, as is what the Sámi consider eco-imperialism by Nordic countries. In their efforts to be standard bearers for renewable energy, Nordic nations have clashed with the Sámi over the development of windfarms, water power facilities, and mines on their native soil; the Sámi assert their legal protections, livelihoods, and traditions are at risk. "It's hard being such a small minority to protect your rights when the justifications are based on environmental protection," Sara notes. "Extractivism has adopted the rhetoric of ecology, but yet it's just attempting to find better ways to persist in habits of consumption."

Personal Struggles

She and her kin have themselves conflicted with the national administration over its tightening regulations on reindeer management. Previously, Sara's sibling initiated a series of finally failed court actions over the mandatory slaughter of his livestock, supposedly to stop overgrazing. To back him, Sara produced a multi-year set of artworks named Pile O'Sápmi including a huge screen of numerous animal bones, which was exhibited at the 2017 art exhibition Documenta 14 and later acquired by the public gallery, where it hangs in the entrance.

Art as Awareness

For many Sámi, art is the only sphere in which they can be heard by outsiders. Recently, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|