🔗 Share this article

Attendees to the renowned gallery are familiar to unexpected displays in its spacious Turbine Hall. They have basked under an artificial sun, glided down amusement rides, and seen AI-powered jellyfish floating through the air. Yet this marks the initial time they will be engaging themselves in the intricate nose passages of a reindeer. The current artist commission for this cavernous space—designed by Native Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—encourages visitors into a winding construction modeled after the expanded inside of a reindeer's nasal airways. Inside, they can stroll around or relax on pelts, tuning in on earphones to community leaders imparting tales and knowledge.

Why the Nose?

Why choose the nasal structure? It may seem whimsical, but the installation celebrates a obscure natural marvel: experts have found that in a fraction of a second, the reindeer's nose can raise the temperature of the ambient air it takes in by eighty degrees, enabling the creature to survive in extreme Arctic climates. Scaling the nose to bigger than a person, Sara notes, "creates a sense of insignificance that you as a human being are not dominant over nature." Sara is a former reporter, writer for kids, and land defender, who comes from a herding family in the Norwegian Arctic. "Maybe that generates the chance to alter your outlook or spark some modesty," she continues.

A Tribute to Sámi Culture

The winding structure is part of a features in Sara's immersive art project showcasing the traditions, science, and philosophy of the Sámi, Europe's only Indigenous people. Partially migratory, the Sámi count approximately 100,000 people ranged across northern Norway, the Finnish Arctic, the Swedish Lapland, and the Russian Arctic (an region they call Sápmi). They've endured discrimination, cultural suppression, and suppression of their language by all four states. With an emphasis on the reindeer, an animal at the center of the Sámi belief system and founding narrative, the installation also draws attention to the community's issues connected to the environmental emergency, loss of territory, and colonialism.

Symbolism in Materials

Along the long access incline, there's a looming, 26-meter structure of skins trapped by electrical wires. It serves as a analogy for the governance and financial structures limiting the Sámi. Partly a utility pole, part spiritual ascent, this part of the installation, titled Goavve-, points to the Sámi name for an extreme weather phenomenon, in which solid layers of ice develop as varying temperatures liquefy and refreeze the snow, encasing the reindeers' primary cold-season nourishment, moss. Goavvi is a outcome of climate change, which is occurring up to four times faster in the Polar region than in other regions.

Three years ago, I met with Sara in the Norwegian far north during a goavvi winter and went with Sámi herders on their snowmobiles in biting cold as they transported carts of animal nutrition on to the wind-scoured frozen landscape to distribute manually. The herd surrounded round us, digging the icy ground in vain attempts for lichen-covered bits. This resource-intensive and labour-intensive method is having a significant influence on herding practices—and on the animals' natural survival. But the other option is death. As these icy periods become frequent, reindeer are succumbing—some from hunger, others drowning after plunging into water bodies through unstable frozen surfaces. On one level, the work is a monument to them. "Through the stacking of components, in a way I'm introducing the goavvi to London," says Sara.

Contrasting Belief Systems

This artwork also underscores the sharp divergence between the industrial interpretation of power as a asset to be exploited for economic benefit and survival and the Sámi philosophy of energy as an innate essence in animals, people, and land. This venue's legacy as a industrial facility is connected to this, as is what the Sámi see as eco-imperialism by regional governments. In their efforts to be standard bearers for renewable energy, Nordic nations have locked horns with the Sámi over the building of windfarms, water power facilities, and mines on their traditional territory; the Sámi contend their fundamental freedoms, incomes, and way of life are endangered. "It's hard being such a limited population to defend yourself when the justifications are grounded in global sustainability," Sara notes. "Extractivism has co-opted the discourse of ecology, but still it's just attempting to find more suitable ways to continue patterns of expenditure."

Family Challenges

Sara and her relatives have themselves clashed with the Norwegian government over its ever-stricter regulations on reindeer management. Previously, Sara's brother undertook a set of ultimately unsuccessful lawsuits over the mandatory slaughter of his animals, apparently to stop vegetation depletion. As a show of solidarity, Sara produced a multi-year set of artworks named Pile O'Sápmi featuring a huge drape of four hundred cranial remains, which was shown at the the art exhibition Documenta 14 and later purchased by the National Museum of Oslo, where it is displayed in the entrance.

Creative Expression as Advocacy

For many Sámi, art appears the exclusive sphere in which they can be heard by the global community. In 2022, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|