🔗 Share this article

Attendees to Tate Modern are familiar to surprising experiences in its expansive Turbine Hall. They have relaxed under an simulated sun, slid down helter skelters, and witnessed robotic sea creatures hovering through the air. Yet this marks the first time they will be engaging themselves in the detailed nose passages of a reindeer. The current artist commission for this immense space—designed by Native Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—encourages visitors into a maze-like construction based on the enlarged interior of a reindeer's nose cavities. Upon entering, they can stroll around or chill out on pelts, listening on earphones to community leaders imparting tales and insights.

Why the Nose?

Why the nose? It might sound whimsical, but the exhibit honors a rarely recognized natural marvel: researchers have found that in a fraction of a second, the reindeer's nose can heat the surrounding air it breathes in by 80°C, allowing the creature to endure in harsh Arctic climates. Enlarging the nose to larger than human size, Sara notes, "creates a sense of smallness that you as a person are not dominant over nature." She is a ex- writer, writer for kids, and environmental activist, who is from a pastoral family in the Norwegian Arctic. "Maybe that fosters the possibility to alter your viewpoint or trigger some humbleness," she adds.

A Celebration to Sámi Culture

The labyrinthine installation is one of several elements in Sara's immersive exhibition celebrating the heritage, understanding, and philosophy of the Sámi, Europe's only Indigenous people. Semi-nomadic, the Sámi total roughly 100,000 people ranged across the Norwegian north, the Finnish Arctic, the Swedish Lapland, and Russia's Kola Peninsula (an area they call Sápmi). They have endured persecution, integration policies, and eradication of their dialect by all four states. Through highlighting the reindeer, an animal at the core of the Sámi belief system and origin tale, the work also spotlights the people's issues relating to the climate crisis, property rights, and colonialism.

Meaning in Components

Along the lengthy entry ramp, there's a soaring, 26-metre sculpture of reindeer hides entangled by power and light cables. It represents a analogy for the political and economic systems restricting the Sámi. Like an electrical tower, part heavenly staircase, this section of the artwork, titled Goavve-, points to the Sámi term for an severe climatic event, in which dense sheets of ice develop as fluctuating conditions thaw and solidify again the snow, encasing the reindeers' primary cold-season sustenance, fungus. This phenomenon is a outcome of global heating, which is occurring up to at an accelerated rate in the Polar region than globally.

Previously, I met with Sara in a remote town during a icy season and accompanied Sámi reindeer keepers on their Arctic vehicles in biting cold as they transported containers of animal nutrition on to the exposed frozen landscape to dispense through labor. The reindeer surrounded round us, scratching the frozen ground in vain attempts for vegetative morsels. This resource-intensive and demanding process is having a significant influence on herding practices—and on the animals' independence. But the alternative is starvation. As these icy periods become frequent, reindeer are succumbing—some from lack of food, others suffocating after sinking in lakes and rivers through unstable frozen surfaces. On one level, the installation is a tribute to them. "With the layering of elements, in a way I'm transporting the goavvi to London," says Sara.

Contrasting Perspectives

The sculpture also highlights the stark contrast between the industrial understanding of electricity as a commodity to be harnessed for profit and livelihood and the Sámi outlook of energy as an inherent power in creatures, humans, and the environment. Tate Modern's past as a fossil fuel plant is tied up in this, as is what the Sámi see as eco-imperialism by Scandinavian states. In their efforts to be exemplars for clean sources, these states have clashed with the Sámi over the building of wind energy projects, water power facilities, and mines on their native soil; the Sámi contend their fundamental freedoms, livelihoods, and traditions are at risk. "It's very difficult being such a tiny group to protect your rights when the reasons are grounded in saving the world," Sara observes. "Mining practices has co-opted the discourse of sustainability, but still it's just attempting to find more suitable ways to persist in patterns of consumption."

Individual Struggles

Sara and her family have themselves conflicted with the national administration over its ever-stricter regulations on herding. In 2016, Sara's sibling initiated a set of finally failed court actions over the required reduction of his livestock, ostensibly to stop overgrazing. In support, Sara developed a extended series of pieces named Pile O'Sápmi including a massive drape of four hundred animal bones, which was displayed at the the show Documenta 14 and later obtained by the national institution, where it resides in the lobby.

The Role of Art in Awareness

For numerous Indigenous people, creative work seems the exclusive sphere in which they can be heard by outsiders. Two years ago, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|