🔗 Share this article

Guests to the renowned gallery are used to unusual encounters in its expansive Turbine Hall. They have basked under an simulated sun, glided down helter skelters, and observed AI-powered sea creatures drifting through the air. Yet this marks the initial time they will be immersing themselves in the complex nasal cavities of a reindeer. The current artist commission for this immense space—developed by Native Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—welcomes visitors into a winding construction based on the enlarged interior of a reindeer's nose passages. Inside, they can meander around or relax on reindeer hides, listening on headphones to Sámi elders telling stories and knowledge.

The Significance of the Nose

Why choose the nasal structure? It may appear quirky, but the artwork pays tribute to a rarely recognized biological feat: experts have uncovered that in less than one second, the reindeer's nose can warm the surrounding air it takes in by 80 degrees celsius, allowing the creature to thrive in inhospitable Arctic climates. Enlarging the nose to larger than human size, Sara notes, "creates a sense of smallness that you as a individual are not superior over nature." She is a ex- journalist, children's author, and land defender, who hails from a pastoral family in the Norwegian Arctic. "Possibly that fosters the potential to shift your perspective or evoke some modesty," she continues.

A Tribute to Sámi Culture

The maze-like structure is one of several components in Sara's immersive art project celebrating the culture, understanding, and beliefs of the Sámi, the sole native group in Europe. Traditionally mobile, the Sámi number roughly 100,000 people distributed across northern Norway, Finland, Sweden, and Russia's Kola Peninsula (an region they call Sápmi). They have experienced discrimination, cultural suppression, and suppression of their language by all four countries. By focusing on the reindeer, an animal at the core of the Sámi mythology and creation story, the installation also highlights the people's struggles relating to the climate crisis, land dispossession, and colonialism.

Symbolism in Components

On the lengthy entrance incline, there's a soaring, eighty-five-foot structure of pelts trapped by utility lines. It serves as a analogy for the political and economic systems constraining the Sámi. Part pylon, part heavenly staircase, this part of the installation, titled Goavve-, points to the Sámi name for an harsh environmental condition, wherein thick layers of ice appear as changing temperatures liquefy and ice over the snow, trapping the reindeers' main winter nourishment, fungus. This phenomenon is a result of climate change, which is happening up to at an accelerated rate in the Polar region than in other regions.

Three years ago, I traveled to see Sara in the Norwegian far north during a icy season and went with Sámi reindeer keepers on their motorized sleds in biting cold as they transported carts of supplementary feed on to the wind-scoured tundra to distribute manually. These animals surrounded round us, scratching the slippery ground in vain attempts for mossy pieces. This costly and labour-intensive method is having a drastic influence on animal rearing—and on the animals' independence. Yet the other option is malnutrition. As these icy periods become routine, reindeer are succumbing—some from starvation, others submerging after sinking in lakes and rivers through prematurely melting ice. To some extent, the installation is a tribute to them. "Through the stacking of materials, in a way I'm transporting the condition to London," says Sara.

Contrasting Perspectives

This artwork also emphasizes the stark difference between the western understanding of electricity as a commodity to be exploited for economic benefit and existence and the Sámi philosophy of energy as an inherent life force in animals, humans, and land. The gallery's history as a fossil fuel plant is connected to this, as is what the Sámi view as eco-imperialism by Scandinavian states. As they strive to be leaders for sustainable power, Scandinavian countries have disagreed with the Sámi over the building of windfarms, hydroelectric dams, and mines on their traditional territory; the Sámi assert their fundamental freedoms, ways of life, and culture are endangered. "It's hard being such a small minority to stand your ground when the reasons are grounded in environmental protection," Sara observes. "Resource exploitation has adopted the discourse of ecology, but yet it's just striving to find better ways to persist in patterns of consumption."

Personal Challenges

The artist and her family have personally conflicted with the state authorities over its increasingly stringent policies on reindeer management. In 2016, Sara's brother initiated a set of finally failed legal cases over the required reduction of his animals, ostensibly to stop overgrazing. In support, Sara created a extended set of creations titled Pile O'Sápmi comprising a massive drape of four hundred reindeer skulls, which was exhibited at the the art exhibition Documenta 14 and later purchased by the public gallery, where it resides in the entrance.

The Role of Art in Advocacy

For many Sámi, art is the sole domain in which they can be listened to by the global community. Two years ago, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|