🔗 Share this article

Visitors to Tate Modern are familiar to surprising experiences in its vast Turbine Hall. They have basked under an man-made sun, glided down amusement rides, and witnessed robotic jellyfish floating through the air. However this marks the first time they will be immersing themselves in the intricate nose chambers of a reindeer. The newest creative installation for this cavernous space—developed by Native Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—encourages patrons into a maze-like design based on the scaled-up inside of a reindeer's nose passages. Inside, they can stroll around or relax on skins, listening on headphones to tribal seniors sharing stories and knowledge.

Why the Nose?

Why the nose? It may appear quirky, but the exhibit celebrates a obscure biological feat: experts have found that in less than one second, the reindeer's nose can heat the incoming air it takes in by 80 degrees celsius, helping the animal to endure in inhospitable Arctic temperatures. Expanding the nose to larger than human size, Sara explains, "creates a sense of insignificance that you as a individual are not in control over nature." The artist is a ex- reporter, young adult author, and rights advocate, who hails from a herding family in northern Norway. "Perhaps that generates the chance to alter your viewpoint or trigger some humbleness," she continues.

A Celebration to Sámi Culture

The winding design is one of several features in Sara's absorbing commission honoring the heritage, understanding, and beliefs of the Sámi, the continent's original inhabitants. Partially migratory, the Sámi count about 100,000 people spread across the Norwegian north, Finland, Sweden, and Russia's Kola Peninsula (an area they call Sápmi). They have faced discrimination, cultural suppression, and suppression of their dialect by all four countries. By focusing on the reindeer, an animal at the heart of the Sámi mythology and creation story, the installation also highlights the people's challenges associated with the global warming, loss of territory, and external control.

Symbolism in Materials

At the lengthy entry ramp, there's a looming, eighty-five-foot formation of pelts entangled by power and light cables. It serves as a metaphor for the political and economic systems restricting the Sámi. Partly a utility pole, part celestial ladder, this part of the exhibit, named Goavve-, relates to the Sámi word for an extreme weather phenomenon, whereby thick sheets of ice appear as varying weather thaw and refreeze the snow, locking in the reindeers' primary winter sustenance, lichen. The condition is a outcome of planetary warming, which is occurring up to four times faster 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 chilly conditions as they hauled containers of supplementary feed on to the exposed frozen landscape to dispense manually. The reindeer gathered round us, pawing the slippery ground in futility for mossy pieces. This expensive and labour-intensive procedure is having a significant influence on herding practices—and on the animals' independence. But the alternative is starvation. When such conditions become frequent, reindeer are succumbing—some from lack of food, others drowning after falling into lakes and rivers through thinning ice sheets. On one level, the installation is a tribute to them. "With the layering of components, in a way I'm introducing the phenomenon to London," says Sara.

Contrasting Perspectives

This artwork also underscores the stark difference between the western interpretation of energy as a resource to be utilized for gain and survival and the Sámi outlook of life force as an inherent life force in animals, people, and land. Tate Modern's past as a coal and oil power station is connected to this, as is what the Sámi consider eco-imperialism by Scandinavian states. In their efforts to be leaders for renewable energy, Scandinavian countries have clashed with the Sámi over the development of wind energy projects, water power facilities, and extraction sites on their traditional territory; the Sámi argue their human rights, livelihoods, and way of life are endangered. "It's challenging being such a tiny group to defend yourself when the justifications are grounded in environmental protection," Sara comments. "Mining practices has adopted the rhetoric of environmentalism, but yet it's just aiming to find better ways to maintain practices of consumption."

Family Conflicts

She and her kin have themselves disagreed with the Norwegian government over its tightening rules on animal husbandry. A few years ago, Sara's sibling embarked on a series of finally failed lawsuits over the forced culling of his animals, ostensibly to stop overgrazing. To back him, Sara developed a four-year series of creations named Pile O'Sápmi comprising a massive screen of 400 cranial remains, which was displayed at the 2017's show Documenta 14 and later acquired by the National Museum of Oslo, where it hangs in the entrance.

Art as Activism

For numerous Indigenous people, art is the sole realm in which they can be understood by people of other nations. Two years ago, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|