🔗 Share this article

Visitors to Tate Modern are familiar to surprising experiences in its expansive Turbine Hall. They've basked under an simulated sun, slid down amusement rides, and witnessed automated sea creatures floating through the air. Yet this marks the initial time they will be engaging themselves in the complex nose passages of a reindeer. The newest artist commission for this immense space—developed by Native Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—invites visitors into a maze-like design based on the expanded inside of a reindeer's nose airways. Upon entering, they can meander around or relax on reindeer hides, tuning in on headphones to community leaders telling tales and insights.

Focus on the Nasal Passages

Why choose the nasal structure? It could appear playful, but the exhibit celebrates a rarely recognized biological feat: researchers have discovered that in under a second, the reindeer's nose can raise the temperature of the surrounding air it inhales by eighty degrees, enabling the creature to endure in harsh Arctic temperatures. Expanding the nose to bigger than a person, Sara explains, "creates a sense of inferiority that you as a person are not dominant over nature." The artist is a ex- journalist, children's author, and environmental activist, who is from a herding family in the Norwegian Arctic. "Possibly that creates the chance to alter your perspective or trigger some humbleness," she adds.

An Homage to Traditional Ways

The winding installation is part of a elements in Sara's absorbing exhibition celebrating the traditions, understanding, and worldview of the Sámi, the continent's original inhabitants. Semi-nomadic, the Sámi total about 100,000 people ranged across the Norwegian north, Finland, Sweden, and Russia's Kola Peninsula (an region they call Sápmi). They have endured persecution, forced assimilation, and suppression of their language by all four states. With an emphasis on the reindeer, an creature at the heart of the Sámi belief system and origin tale, the installation also draws attention to the people's challenges associated with the global warming, property rights, and external control.

Meaning in Elements

Along the lengthy entry ramp, there's a soaring, 26-metre formation of pelts trapped by power and light cables. It can be read as a analogy for the governance and financial structures restricting the Sámi. Like an electrical tower, part spiritual ascent, this component of the installation, called Goavve-, points to the Sámi term for an severe climatic event, whereby thick sheets of ice form as changing temperatures thaw and ice over the snow, locking in the reindeers' main cold-season sustenance, fungus. The condition is a outcome of global heating, which is happening up to much more rapidly in the Polar region than in other regions.

Three years ago, I met with Sara in Guovdageaidnu during a severe cold period and went with Sámi reindeer keepers on their Arctic vehicles in biting cold as they transported trailers of supplementary feed on to the wind-scoured Arctic plains to distribute through labor. These animals gathered round us, digging the slippery ground in futility for mossy pieces. This resource-intensive and demanding process is having a drastic influence on reindeer husbandry—and on the animals' self-sufficiency. Yet the alternative is starvation. As goavvi winters become commonplace, reindeer are perishing—some from hunger, others drowning after sinking in water bodies through prematurely melting ice. On one level, the art is a memorial to them. "By overlapping of elements, in a way I'm bringing the condition to London," says Sara.

Diverging Perspectives

This artwork also highlights the stark divergence between the modern view of power as a asset to be exploited for profit and survival and the Sámi outlook of energy as an innate power in creatures, individuals, and land. Tate Modern's history as a fossil fuel plant is tied up in this, as is what the Sámi view as environmental exploitation by Nordic countries. As they strive to be exemplars for clean sources, Nordic nations have disagreed with the Sámi over the development of wind energy projects, hydroelectric dams, and mines on their native soil; the Sámi contend their human rights, incomes, and way of life are threatened. "It's very difficult being such a limited population to protect your rights when the reasons are rooted in environmental protection," Sara notes. "Mining practices has adopted the discourse of environmentalism, but yet it's just striving to find better ways to continue habits of use."

Personal Challenges

The artist and her relatives have themselves clashed with the state authorities over its increasingly stringent policies on reindeer management. In 2016, Sara's sibling initiated a set of unsuccessful court actions over the required reduction of his livestock, apparently to stop overgrazing. As a show of solidarity, Sara created a multi-year set of creations named Pile O'Sápmi including a colossal drape of numerous animal bones, which was shown at the 2017 show Documenta 14 and later obtained by the National Museum of Oslo, where it hangs in the entryway.

The Role of Art in Advocacy

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