🔗 Share this article

Attendees to the renowned gallery are familiar to surprising encounters in its spacious Turbine Hall. They have relaxed under an man-made sun, glided down amusement rides, and observed robotic jellyfish drifting through the air. Yet this marks the first time they will be immersing themselves in the complex nose chambers of a reindeer. The current creative installation for this cavernous space—developed by Indigenous Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—welcomes visitors into a maze-like structure inspired by the enlarged inside of a reindeer's nasal cavities. Upon entering, they can meander around or chill out on pelts, tuning in on earphones to community leaders imparting narratives and knowledge.

The Significance of the Nose

Why the nose? It may seem whimsical, but the installation celebrates a obscure biological feat: researchers have found that in under a second, the reindeer's nose can heat the ambient air it inhales by 80 degrees celsius, enabling the animal to thrive in inhospitable Arctic climates. Enlarging the nose to human-scale dimensions, Sara says, "creates a perception of inferiority that you as a person are not in control over nature." The artist is a former reporter, children's author, and environmental activist, who comes from a herding family in the far north of Norway. "Maybe that creates the potential to change your perspective or trigger some humility," she continues.

An Homage to Indigenous Heritage

The maze-like design is among various elements in Sara's absorbing art project celebrating the traditions, science, and worldview of the Sámi, the sole native group in Europe. Traditionally mobile, the Sámi total about 100,000 people distributed across northern Norway, Finland, the Swedish Lapland, and the Russian Arctic (an region they call Sápmi). They've experienced persecution, forced assimilation, and repression of their dialect by all four countries. With an emphasis on the reindeer, an animal at the center of the Sámi mythology and founding narrative, the installation also draws attention to the people's challenges connected to the climate crisis, property rights, and colonialism.

Metaphor in Materials

At the lengthy entry incline, there's a towering, 26-meter formation of reindeer hides ensnared by power and light cables. It serves as a metaphor for the governance and financial structures limiting the Sámi. Partly a utility pole, part heavenly staircase, this component of the exhibit, called Goavve-, points to the Sámi term for an harsh environmental condition, wherein dense coatings of ice develop as fluctuating conditions melt and solidify again the snow, trapping the reindeers' main cold-season food, fungus. This phenomenon is a result of climate change, which is occurring up to four times faster in the Far North than elsewhere.

Previously, I visited Sara in a remote town during a severe cold period and accompanied Sámi herders on their motorized sleds in chilly conditions as they hauled containers of supplementary feed on to the wind-scoured frozen landscape to distribute through labor. These animals crowded round us, pawing the frozen ground in vain for lichen-covered morsels. This resource-intensive and demanding procedure is having a severe effect on animal rearing—and on the animals' self-sufficiency. However the alternative is starvation. When such conditions become frequent, reindeer are perishing—some from hunger, others submerging after falling into lakes and rivers through unstable frozen surfaces. On one level, the art is a monument to them. "By overlapping of components, in a way I'm introducing the phenomenon to London," says Sara.

Diverging Worldviews

The sculpture also emphasizes the sharp contrast between the modern interpretation of power as a resource to be harnessed for economic benefit and livelihood and the Sámi outlook of vitality as an natural power in animals, individuals, and nature. This venue's history as a coal and oil power station is connected to this, as is what the Sámi consider green colonialism by regional governments. While attempting to be standard bearers for clean sources, these states have clashed with the Sámi over the development of wind energy projects, river barriers, and digging operations on their ancestral land; the Sámi argue their legal protections, incomes, and way of life are endangered. "It's challenging being such a small minority to stand your ground when the justifications are based on global sustainability," Sara observes. "Mining practices has appropriated the language of sustainability, but yet it's just attempting to find better ways to persist in patterns of consumption."

Family Struggles

Sara and her kin have personally disagreed with the Norwegian government over its tightening rules on reindeer management. In 2016, Sara's brother undertook a sequence of unsuccessful court actions over the required reduction of his animals, apparently to stop vegetation depletion. As a show of solidarity, Sara produced a multi-year series of creations named Pile O'Sápmi including a huge curtain of numerous cranial remains, which was displayed at the 2017's art exhibition Documenta 14 and later acquired by the public gallery, where it hangs in the lobby.

Creative Expression as Advocacy

For numerous Indigenous people, creative work seems the only sphere in which they can be heard by people of other nations. Two years ago, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|