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Guests to Tate Modern are used to unusual experiences in its spacious Turbine Hall. They have basked under an man-made sun, descended down amusement rides, and witnessed robotic sea creatures hovering through the air. However this marks the inaugural time they will be venturing themselves in the complex nose cavities of a reindeer. The newest artist commission for this immense space—designed by Indigenous Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—welcomes patrons into a winding structure modeled after the scaled-up inside of a reindeer's nose airways. Once inside, they can stroll around or unwind on skins, tuning in on headphones to Sámi elders sharing stories and insights.

Why the Nose?

Why the nose? It could seem playful, but the installation celebrates a little-known biological feat: experts have uncovered that in less than one second, the reindeer's nose can heat the surrounding air it takes in by 80 degrees celsius, helping the creature to thrive in inhospitable Arctic climates. Enlarging the nose to human-scale dimensions, Sara notes, "generates a perception of smallness that you as a person are not in control over nature." The artist is a former writer, young adult author, and rights advocate, who is from a herding family in the far north of Norway. "Maybe that generates the chance to alter your perspective or spark some humility," she continues.

A Tribute to Sámi Culture

The winding design is one of several components in Sara's absorbing art project honoring the heritage, understanding, and beliefs of the Sámi, the sole native group in Europe. Semi-nomadic, the Sámi count approximately 100,000 people distributed across the Norwegian north, the Finnish Arctic, the Swedish Lapland, and the Kola region (an region they call Sápmi). They've experienced discrimination, integration policies, and suppression of their language by all four countries. With an emphasis on the reindeer, an creature at the core of the Sámi cosmology and creation story, the art also highlights the group's issues associated with the environmental emergency, land dispossession, and imperialism.

Metaphor in Materials

At the long entrance incline, there's a soaring, eighty-five-foot structure of reindeer hides entangled by power and light cables. It serves as a analogy for the governance and financial structures limiting the Sámi. Like an electrical tower, part celestial ladder, this component of the installation, named Goavve-, points to the Sámi name for an harsh environmental condition, whereby solid sheets of ice form as varying conditions melt and solidify again the snow, trapping the reindeers' key cold-season nourishment, moss. This phenomenon is a result of global heating, which is taking place up to at an accelerated rate in the Arctic than globally.

A few years back, I visited Sara in the Norwegian far north during a severe cold period and went with Sámi pastoralists on their Arctic vehicles in freezing temperatures as they carried carts of supplementary feed on to the wind-scoured Arctic plains to distribute manually. The reindeer crowded round us, pawing the slippery ground in vain attempts for lichen-covered morsels. This expensive and labour-intensive process is having a severe effect on herding practices—and on the animals' self-sufficiency. Yet the alternative is starvation. When such conditions become routine, reindeer are succumbing—some from starvation, others drowning after falling into streams through prematurely melting ice. To some extent, the installation is a memorial to them. "Through the stacking of elements, in a way I'm introducing the condition to London," says Sara.

Contrasting Belief Systems

The installation also emphasizes the stark difference between the western interpretation of power as a commodity to be exploited for gain and livelihood and the Sámi outlook of vitality as an innate power in animals, individuals, and the environment. This venue's legacy as a coal and oil power station is linked with this, as is what the Sámi see as green colonialism by Scandinavian states. While attempting to be exemplars for clean sources, Nordic nations have locked horns with the Sámi over the development of turbine fields, water power facilities, and mines on their traditional territory; the Sámi assert their human rights, ways of life, and traditions are threatened. "It's very difficult being such a limited population to protect your rights when the reasons are based on environmental protection," Sara comments. "Resource exploitation has adopted the discourse of sustainability, but still it's just attempting to find more suitable ways to maintain habits of consumption."

Personal Challenges

Sara and her kin have themselves conflicted with the state authorities over its ever-stricter policies on animal husbandry. A few years ago, Sara's sibling undertook a sequence of ultimately unsuccessful court actions over the mandatory slaughter of his animals, ostensibly to stop excessive feeding. To back him, Sara produced a extended series of pieces called Pile O'Sápmi featuring a huge screen of 400 animal bones, which was exhibited at the 2017 show Documenta 14 and later obtained by the National Museum of Oslo, where it resides in the entryway.

Creative Expression as Awareness

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