Attendees to Tate Modern are accustomed to unexpected displays in its spacious Turbine Hall. They have relaxed under an man-made sun, descended down amusement rides, and witnessed automated sea creatures drifting through the air. But this marks the inaugural time they will be immersing themselves in the complex nasal cavities of a reindeer. The newest artist commission for this cavernous space—designed by Indigenous Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—encourages visitors into a winding construction inspired by the expanded inside of a reindeer's nose cavities. Upon entering, they can stroll around or chill out on skins, listening on headphones to tribal seniors imparting narratives and wisdom.
Why the nose? It might sound whimsical, but the artwork honors a obscure biological feat: experts have uncovered that in under a second, the reindeer's nose can heat the surrounding air it takes in by 80°C, enabling the animal to survive in extreme Arctic temperatures. Expanding the nose to bigger than a person, Sara says, "produces a perception of insignificance that you as a human being are not superior over nature." Sara is a former journalist, young adult author, and environmental activist, who is from a pastoral family in the Norwegian Arctic. "Perhaps that creates the chance to alter your viewpoint or spark some humility," she continues.
The maze-like installation is one of several components in Sara's immersive commission showcasing the culture, understanding, and philosophy of the Sámi, the continent's original inhabitants. Semi-nomadic, the Sámi total roughly 100,000 people distributed across northern Norway, Finland, Sweden, and the Russian Arctic (an territory they call Sápmi). They have experienced persecution, cultural suppression, and suppression of their dialect by all four countries. By focusing on the reindeer, an creature at the center of the Sámi mythology and founding narrative, the work also draws attention to the community's issues connected to the climate crisis, loss of territory, and imperialism.
On the long access ramp, there's a looming, eighty-five-foot sculpture of skins ensnared by utility lines. It represents a analogy for the societal frameworks constraining the Sámi. Partly a utility pole, part celestial ladder, this part of the installation, titled Goavve-, relates to the Sámi word for an extreme weather phenomenon, wherein dense coatings of ice develop as changing weather liquefy and refreeze the snow, trapping the reindeers' main cold-season food, fungus. Goavvi is a consequence of planetary warming, which is occurring up to much more rapidly in the Polar region than globally.
A few years back, I visited Sara in Guovdageaidnu during a severe cold period and went with Sámi herders on their Arctic vehicles in chilly conditions as they transported trailers of supplementary feed on to the wind-scoured tundra to distribute by hand. The herd gathered round us, digging the frozen ground in vain for vegetative bits. This costly and demanding procedure is having a drastic influence on herding practices—and on the animals' natural survival. Yet the alternative is starvation. As goavvi winters become commonplace, reindeer are perishing—a number from lack of food, others suffocating after falling into water bodies through thinning ice sheets. To some extent, the installation is a memorial to them. "Through the stacking of materials, in a way I'm introducing the condition to London," says Sara.
This artwork also emphasizes the stark difference between the industrial view of power as a resource to be harnessed for profit and survival and the Sámi outlook of energy as an innate power in animals, people, and the environment. The gallery's legacy as a fossil fuel plant is tied up in this, as is what the Sámi consider green colonialism by Nordic countries. In their efforts to be exemplars for clean sources, Nordic nations have disagreed with the Sámi over the construction of windfarms, water power facilities, and digging operations on their native soil; the Sámi argue their human rights, incomes, and way of life are at risk. "It's challenging being such a small minority to protect your rights when the arguments are based on environmental protection," Sara notes. "Resource exploitation has co-opted the rhetoric of sustainability, but nonetheless it's just attempting to find more suitable ways to continue patterns of use."
The artist and her kin have themselves disagreed with the state authorities over its increasingly stringent policies on animal husbandry. Previously, Sara's sibling embarked on a sequence of unsuccessful legal cases over the mandatory slaughter of his animals, ostensibly to stop excessive feeding. To back him, Sara produced a multi-year set of creations named Pile O'Sápmi including a huge curtain of four hundred animal bones, which was displayed at the 2017's event Documenta 14 and later purchased by the national institution, where it resides in the lobby.
For many Sámi, visual expression appears the only domain in which they can be listened to by outsiders. In 2022, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|
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