🔗 Share this article

Attendees to Tate Modern are used to surprising encounters in its expansive Turbine Hall. They've sunbathed under an artificial sun, descended down amusement rides, and seen robotic jellyfish drifting through the air. Yet this marks the inaugural time they will be venturing themselves in the intricate nose cavities of a reindeer. The newest artist commission for this immense space—created by Indigenous Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—welcomes patrons into a maze-like construction modeled after the scaled-up interior of a reindeer's nose passages. Once inside, they can meander around or relax on pelts, listening on earphones to Sámi elders sharing narratives and insights.

Focus on the Nasal Passages

What's the focus on the nose? It may appear whimsical, but the exhibit pays tribute to a obscure natural marvel: scientists have found that in under a second, the reindeer's nose can warm the ambient air it breathes in by 80 degrees celsius, allowing the animal to thrive in extreme Arctic conditions. Scaling the nose to bigger than a person, Sara notes, "produces a perception of smallness that you as a person are not in control over nature." She is a ex- journalist, children's author, and rights advocate, who hails from a reindeer-herding family in northern Norway. "Perhaps that fosters the possibility to alter your outlook or spark some humility," she adds.

A Tribute to Indigenous Heritage

The labyrinthine structure is part of a elements in Sara's engaging commission celebrating the heritage, science, and philosophy of the Sámi, Europe's only Indigenous people. Partially migratory, the Sámi count roughly 100,000 people distributed across the Norwegian north, Finland, the Swedish Lapland, and the Russian Arctic (an region they call Sápmi). They've faced oppression, integration policies, and repression of their dialect by all four states. Through highlighting the reindeer, an animal at the core of the Sámi belief system and creation story, the work also spotlights the group's struggles relating to the environmental emergency, loss of territory, and imperialism.

Symbolism in Materials

At the extended access incline, there's a towering, 26-metre sculpture of skins entangled by power and light cables. It can be read as a symbol for the political and economic systems constraining the Sámi. Part pylon, part heavenly staircase, this section of the artwork, named Goavve-, relates to the Sámi word for an harsh environmental condition, in which solid layers of ice appear as fluctuating temperatures thaw and solidify again the snow, locking in the reindeers' main cold-season nourishment, moss. Goavvi is a consequence of global heating, which is taking place up to at an accelerated rate in the Arctic than elsewhere.

Previously, I met with Sara in a remote town during a icy season and went with Sámi pastoralists on their motorized sleds in chilly conditions as they hauled carts of animal nutrition on to the exposed frozen landscape to distribute through labor. The reindeer gathered round us, scratching the icy ground in futility for vegetative morsels. This costly and labour-intensive process is having a significant influence on herding practices—and on the animals' independence. But the other option is malnutrition. As these icy periods become commonplace, reindeer are succumbing—some from starvation, others submerging after sinking in lakes and rivers through prematurely melting ice. To some extent, the art is a monument to them. "By overlapping of elements, in a way I'm transporting the phenomenon to London," says Sara.

Opposing Belief Systems

The installation also emphasizes the clear difference between the industrial interpretation of energy as a resource to be exploited for profit and livelihood and the Sámi philosophy of vitality as an innate essence in animals, people, and nature. This venue's past as a fossil fuel plant is connected to this, as is what the Sámi view as eco-imperialism by Scandinavian states. As they strive to be leaders for renewable energy, these states have locked horns with the Sámi over the construction of turbine fields, river barriers, and extraction sites on their ancestral land; the Sámi assert their human rights, livelihoods, and traditions are endangered. "It's hard being such a small minority to protect your rights when the reasons are rooted in environmental protection," Sara observes. "Resource exploitation has co-opted the rhetoric of environmentalism, but still it's just striving to find more suitable ways to continue practices of expenditure."

Family Struggles

The artist and her kin have personally clashed with the Norwegian government over its tightening policies on herding. In 2016, Sara's sibling initiated a set of unsuccessful lawsuits over the mandatory slaughter of his herd, supposedly to stop vegetation depletion. In support, Sara developed a four-year collection of artworks called Pile O'Sápmi comprising a huge curtain of 400 reindeer skulls, which was exhibited at the 2017 show Documenta 14 and later purchased by the public gallery, where it is displayed in the entrance.

The Role of Art in Activism

For numerous Indigenous people, visual expression appears the exclusive sphere in which they can be heard by the global community. Recently, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|