🔗 Share this article

Attendees to the renowned gallery are accustomed to unexpected encounters in its expansive Turbine Hall. They've relaxed under an artificial sun, descended down helter skelters, and seen robotic sea creatures hovering through the air. But this marks the initial time they will be engaging themselves in the intricate nasal cavities of a reindeer. The latest artist commission for this huge space—designed by Native Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—welcomes visitors into a winding construction inspired by the scaled-up interior of a reindeer's nasal cavities. Upon entering, they can meander around or relax on skins, listening on headphones to tribal seniors telling tales and wisdom.

The Significance of the Nose

Why choose the nasal structure? It may seem quirky, but the installation honors a little-known biological feat: researchers have discovered that in less than one second, the reindeer's nose can heat the surrounding air it takes in by 80°C, enabling the creature to survive in harsh Arctic temperatures. Scaling the nose to human-scale dimensions, Sara notes, "generates a sense of smallness that you as a human being are not superior over nature." She is a ex- journalist, children's author, and land defender, who is from a reindeer-herding family in the far north of Norway. "Possibly that fosters the possibility to shift your perspective or spark some modesty," she adds.

A Tribute to Indigenous Heritage

The labyrinthine structure is one of several elements in Sara's engaging exhibition showcasing the traditions, science, and beliefs of the Sámi, Europe's only Indigenous people. Partially migratory, the Sámi count roughly 100,000 people spread across northern Norway, Finland, the Swedish Lapland, and the Russian Arctic (an territory they call Sápmi). They've faced oppression, forced assimilation, and suppression of their dialect by all four nations. Through highlighting the reindeer, an creature at the center of the Sámi mythology and creation story, the installation also draws attention to the people's struggles associated with the climate crisis, land dispossession, and colonialism.

Meaning in Materials

On the long entry slope, there's a towering, eighty-five-foot formation of pelts entangled by power and light cables. It represents a metaphor for the societal frameworks restricting the Sámi. Like an electrical tower, part spiritual ascent, this part of the artwork, called Goavve-, points to the Sámi term for an harsh environmental condition, whereby solid layers of ice form as fluctuating weather melt and refreeze the snow, locking in the reindeers' main cold-season sustenance, moss. Goavvi is a consequence of planetary warming, which is taking place up to at an accelerated rate in the Arctic than elsewhere.

Previously, I traveled to see Sara in Guovdageaidnu during a icy season and joined Sámi pastoralists on their Arctic vehicles in chilly conditions as they hauled containers of food pellets on to the exposed frozen landscape to distribute through labor. The reindeer gathered round us, scratching the icy ground in futility for vegetative pieces. This expensive and labour-intensive process is having a severe effect on animal rearing—and on the animals' natural survival. However the alternative is malnutrition. As goavvi winters become routine, reindeer are dying—a number from starvation, others submerging after plunging into lakes and rivers through prematurely melting ice. On one level, the art is a monument to them. "With the layering of elements, in a way I'm transporting the phenomenon to London," says Sara.

Opposing Perspectives

The sculpture also highlights the sharp divergence between the western view of electricity as a commodity to be utilized for profit and survival and the Sámi outlook of energy as an natural essence in creatures, humans, and the environment. The gallery's past as a coal and oil power station is connected to this, as is what the Sámi view as green colonialism by regional governments. As they strive to be standard bearers for sustainable power, Nordic nations have locked horns with the Sámi over the construction of turbine fields, water power facilities, and mines on their traditional territory; the Sámi assert their legal protections, incomes, and traditions are endangered. "It's challenging being such a tiny group to protect your rights when the reasons are based on environmental protection," Sara observes. "Extractivism has adopted the rhetoric of ecology, but still it's just aiming to find better ways to continue habits of expenditure."

Personal Challenges

The artist and her kin have personally conflicted with the state authorities over its ever-stricter regulations on reindeer management. In 2016, Sara's brother embarked on a set of ultimately unsuccessful lawsuits over the required reduction of his animals, ostensibly to stop excessive feeding. In support, Sara produced a four-year set of artworks named Pile O'Sápmi including a colossal drape of 400 reindeer skulls, which was displayed at the the art exhibition Documenta 14 and later purchased by the public gallery, where it is displayed in the entryway.

Creative Expression as Advocacy

Among the community, art appears 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|