🔗 Share this article

Attendees to Tate Modern are accustomed to unusual displays in its spacious Turbine Hall. They've relaxed under an artificial sun, glided down amusement rides, and observed robotic jellyfish drifting through the air. Yet this marks the first time they will be immersing themselves in the complex nose passages of a reindeer. The latest creative installation for this huge space—designed by Native Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—welcomes visitors into a labyrinthine structure inspired by the enlarged inside of a reindeer's nose passages. Once inside, they can wander around or unwind on pelts, tuning in on earphones to Sámi elders telling stories and knowledge.

Why the Nose?

Why the nose? It could seem quirky, but the installation celebrates a rarely recognized scientific wonder: researchers have uncovered that in under a second, the reindeer's nose can heat the surrounding air it inhales by eighty degrees, allowing the animal to endure in inhospitable Arctic conditions. Scaling the nose to human-scale dimensions, Sara notes, "produces a feeling of inferiority that you as a individual are not superior over nature." She is a former reporter, writer for kids, and land defender, who hails from a herding family in the far north of Norway. "Perhaps that creates the potential to alter your perspective or spark some humbleness," she states.

A Celebration to Indigenous Heritage

The maze-like structure is part of a elements in Sara's immersive art project celebrating the traditions, knowledge, and worldview of the Sámi, the sole native group in Europe. Partially migratory, the Sámi number about 100,000 people ranged across northern Norway, Finland, Sweden, and the Kola region (an region they call Sápmi). They have endured discrimination, integration policies, and repression of their language by all four countries. Through highlighting the reindeer, an animal at the core of the Sámi cosmology and creation story, the installation also spotlights the people's issues connected to the environmental emergency, loss of territory, and imperialism.

Symbolism in Elements

On the extended access ramp, there's a looming, 26-metre structure of pelts ensnared by utility lines. It represents a analogy for the governance and financial structures constraining the Sámi. Like an electrical tower, part celestial ladder, this part of the exhibit, named Goavve-, refers to the Sámi term for an harsh environmental condition, in which dense coatings of ice form as fluctuating conditions melt and refreeze the snow, trapping the reindeers' primary winter sustenance, fungus. The condition is a consequence of global heating, which is taking place up to much more rapidly in the Far North than in other regions.

Previously, I traveled to see Sara in the Norwegian far north during a goavvi winter and went with Sámi herders on their Arctic vehicles in biting cold as they carried trailers of supplementary feed on to the exposed frozen landscape to distribute through labor. The herd gathered round us, pawing the frozen ground in vain for lichen-covered morsels. This resource-intensive and labour-intensive procedure is having a drastic effect on herding practices—and on the animals' natural survival. But the alternative is death. As these icy periods become commonplace, reindeer are succumbing—a number from starvation, others suffocating after falling into lakes and rivers through unstable frozen surfaces. To some extent, the work is a memorial to them. "By overlapping of components, in a way I'm bringing the goavvi to London," says Sara.

Diverging Perspectives

The sculpture also highlights the clear contrast between the western understanding of power as a commodity to be exploited for gain and existence and the Sámi outlook of vitality as an innate life force in animals, people, and land. This venue's past as a industrial facility is tied up in this, as is what the Sámi see as eco-imperialism by Nordic countries. As they strive to be leaders for clean sources, Scandinavian countries have clashed with the Sámi over the construction of turbine fields, water power facilities, and digging operations on their traditional territory; the Sámi assert their legal protections, livelihoods, and culture are at risk. "It's hard being such a tiny group to defend yourself when the justifications are grounded in environmental protection," Sara comments. "Mining practices has co-opted the language of environmentalism, but still it's just attempting to find better ways to persist in patterns of expenditure."

Personal Conflicts

Sara and her family have themselves conflicted with the national administration over its ever-stricter rules on herding. In 2016, Sara's sibling initiated a sequence of unsuccessful lawsuits over the mandatory slaughter of his herd, apparently to stop overgrazing. In support, Sara developed a extended series of creations called Pile O'Sápmi featuring a huge drape of four hundred cranial remains, which was exhibited at the 2017's event Documenta 14 and later obtained by the public gallery, where it hangs in the entryway.

Creative Expression as Awareness

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