🔗 Share this article

Attendees to Tate Modern are accustomed to surprising encounters in its expansive Turbine Hall. They have basked under an man-made sun, descended down spiral slides, and observed automated jellyfish drifting through the air. But this marks the inaugural time they will be immersing themselves in the detailed nasal passages of a reindeer. The current artist commission for this cavernous space—created by Native Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—invites visitors into a labyrinthine structure based on the enlarged interior of a reindeer's nasal airways. Once inside, they can wander around or chill out on skins, listening on earphones to community leaders sharing tales and knowledge.

Focus on the Nasal Passages

Why choose the nasal structure? It might seem playful, but the artwork pays tribute to a little-known natural marvel: scientists have found that in a fraction of a second, the reindeer's nose can warm the ambient air it inhales by 80°C, allowing the creature to endure in harsh Arctic climates. Enlarging the nose to larger than human size, Sara notes, "creates a feeling of inferiority that you as a individual are not in control over nature." She is a ex- reporter, young adult author, and environmental activist, who comes from a reindeer-herding family in the Norwegian Arctic. "Possibly that fosters the chance to alter your perspective or spark some modesty," she continues.

A Tribute to Indigenous Heritage

The winding structure is part of a elements in Sara's engaging commission celebrating the heritage, understanding, and worldview of the Sámi, Europe's only Indigenous people. Traditionally mobile, the Sámi number about 100,000 people distributed across northern Norway, the Finnish Arctic, Sweden, and the Kola region (an territory they call Sápmi). They've experienced oppression, forced assimilation, and suppression of their language by all four states. By focusing on the reindeer, an animal at the center of the Sámi mythology and origin tale, the art also spotlights the community's struggles relating to the global warming, land dispossession, and imperialism.

Symbolism in Elements

At the extended entrance incline, there's a soaring, eighty-five-foot sculpture of reindeer hides entangled by power and light cables. It represents a analogy for the governance and financial structures constraining the Sámi. Partly a utility pole, part celestial ladder, this section of the artwork, called Goavve-, refers to the Sámi term for an harsh environmental condition, wherein thick coatings of ice appear as changing weather liquefy and refreeze the snow, trapping the reindeers' primary winter nourishment, fungus. The condition is a result of climate change, which is occurring up to at an accelerated rate in the Far North than elsewhere.

Previously, I traveled to see Sara in Guovdageaidnu during a severe cold period and went with Sámi reindeer keepers on their snowmobiles in biting cold as they carried trailers of animal nutrition on to the barren tundra to provide manually. The herd crowded round us, scratching the icy ground in vain for mossy morsels. This resource-intensive and laborious procedure is having a significant influence on herding practices—and on the animals' independence. But the alternative is malnutrition. As these icy periods become frequent, reindeer are succumbing—some from hunger, others suffocating after falling into streams through unstable frozen surfaces. To some extent, the installation is a memorial to them. "Through the stacking of components, in a way I'm transporting the phenomenon to London," says Sara.

Contrasting Belief Systems

This artwork also emphasizes the stark divergence between the modern understanding of energy as a commodity to be utilized for profit and survival and the Sámi philosophy of life force as an inherent life force in animals, individuals, and nature. This venue's legacy as a coal and oil power station is connected to this, as is what the Sámi consider environmental exploitation by Nordic countries. In their efforts to be standard bearers for renewable energy, Scandinavian countries have clashed with the Sámi over the development of wind energy projects, river barriers, and extraction sites on their traditional territory; the Sámi argue their fundamental freedoms, livelihoods, and traditions are threatened. "It's very difficult being such a small minority to stand your ground when the justifications are based on environmental protection," Sara comments. "Extractivism has adopted the discourse of sustainability, but nonetheless it's just attempting to find better ways to persist in practices of expenditure."

Family Struggles

Sara and her relatives have themselves disagreed with the state authorities over its ever-stricter regulations on herding. Previously, Sara's brother undertook a sequence of ultimately unsuccessful court actions over the required reduction of his livestock, ostensibly to stop excessive feeding. To back him, Sara produced a four-year collection of creations titled Pile O'Sápmi including a massive curtain of numerous reindeer skulls, which was displayed at the the art exhibition Documenta 14 and later acquired by the public gallery, where it is displayed in the lobby.

Art as Advocacy

Among the community, art is the sole sphere in which they can be listened to by people of other nations. Recently, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|