🔗 Share this article

Visitors to the renowned gallery are familiar to unusual encounters in its expansive Turbine Hall. They have sunbathed under an man-made sun, slid down helter skelters, and seen AI-powered sea creatures hovering through the air. But this marks the first time they will be venturing themselves in the complex nose chambers of a reindeer. The newest creative installation for this immense space—developed by Native Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—invites gallerygoers into a winding structure inspired by the scaled-up inside of a reindeer's nasal cavities. Inside, they can meander around or chill out on skins, listening on headphones to tribal seniors imparting narratives and insights.

Why the Nose?

What's the focus on the nose? It may appear playful, but the artwork celebrates a little-known scientific wonder: experts have uncovered that in less than one second, the reindeer's nose can warm the incoming air it breathes in by 80°C, allowing the animal to survive in harsh Arctic temperatures. Expanding the nose to larger than human size, Sara notes, "creates a sense of insignificance that you as a person are not in control over nature." The artist is a ex- writer, writer for kids, and environmental activist, who comes from a herding family in the far north of Norway. "Maybe that generates the potential to shift your perspective or evoke some humility," she adds.

A Celebration to Indigenous Heritage

The maze-like design is among various components in Sara's immersive commission showcasing the traditions, understanding, and philosophy of the Sámi, Europe's only Indigenous people. Traditionally mobile, the Sámi number roughly 100,000 people distributed across northern Norway, Finland, Sweden, and the Kola region (an territory they call Sápmi). They have experienced persecution, cultural suppression, and eradication of their tongue by all four countries. Through highlighting the reindeer, an creature at the heart of the Sámi cosmology and founding narrative, the installation also draws attention to the group's struggles connected to the environmental emergency, property rights, and imperialism.

Metaphor in Materials

Along the extended access slope, there's a soaring, eighty-five-foot sculpture of skins trapped by power and light cables. It represents a metaphor for the governance and financial structures restricting the Sámi. Partly a utility pole, part spiritual ascent, this component of the installation, called Goavve-, relates to the Sámi word for an severe climatic event, in which solid layers of ice develop as varying weather thaw and solidify again the snow, locking in the reindeers' primary cold-season sustenance, moss. This phenomenon is a consequence of climate change, which is taking place up to four times faster in the Far North than elsewhere.

Three years ago, I visited Sara in Guovdageaidnu during a severe cold period and joined Sámi herders on their Arctic vehicles in biting cold as they transported trailers of supplementary feed on to the wind-scoured tundra to provide manually. The reindeer crowded round us, pawing the frozen ground in vain for lichen-covered pieces. This costly and laborious procedure is having a significant effect on reindeer husbandry—and on the animals' self-sufficiency. Yet the alternative is malnutrition. As these icy periods become routine, reindeer are succumbing—some from starvation, others drowning after sinking in lakes and rivers through unstable frozen surfaces. In a sense, the art is a monument to them. "With the layering of materials, in a way I'm bringing the phenomenon to London," says Sara.

Contrasting Worldviews

This artwork also emphasizes the clear divergence between the western interpretation of electricity as a commodity to be exploited for profit and livelihood and the Sámi worldview of life force as an innate power in creatures, individuals, and land. This venue's past as a coal and oil power station is tied up in this, as is what the Sámi view as green colonialism by Scandinavian states. While attempting to be exemplars for renewable energy, these states have locked horns with the Sámi over the construction of turbine fields, river barriers, and extraction sites on their ancestral land; the Sámi assert their fundamental freedoms, livelihoods, and traditions are endangered. "It's very difficult being such a small minority to protect your rights when the justifications are grounded in saving the world," Sara observes. "Resource exploitation has adopted the discourse of ecology, but still it's just aiming to find better ways to persist in habits of use."

Individual Conflicts

The artist and her kin have personally disagreed with the state authorities over its tightening regulations on reindeer management. In 2016, Sara's brother embarked on a set of finally failed lawsuits over the forced culling of his animals, supposedly to stop vegetation depletion. In support, Sara produced a four-year series of artworks named Pile O'Sápmi comprising a huge drape of four hundred reindeer skulls, which was shown at the 2017's event Documenta 14 and later purchased by the public gallery, where it hangs in the lobby.

Art as Advocacy

For many Sámi, art is the only realm in which they can be heard by people of other nations. In 2022, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|