🔗 Share this article

Visitors to the renowned gallery are accustomed to unexpected experiences in its vast Turbine Hall. They have basked under an simulated sun, slid down helter skelters, and observed AI-powered jellyfish floating through the air. Yet this marks the initial time they will be engaging themselves in the intricate nasal passages of a reindeer. The newest artist commission for this cavernous space—created by Indigenous Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—invites visitors into a winding design modeled after the scaled-up inside of a reindeer's nose passages. Inside, they can wander around or relax on pelts, listening on headphones to community leaders imparting tales and insights.

Why the Nose?

Why the nose? It could seem whimsical, but the installation celebrates a little-known scientific wonder: experts have discovered that in less than one second, the reindeer's nose can warm the incoming air it inhales by 80 degrees celsius, allowing the creature to endure in inhospitable Arctic climates. Enlarging the nose to bigger than a person, Sara says, "produces a sense of inferiority that you as a human being are not in control over nature." She is a ex- reporter, young adult author, and environmental activist, who hails from a herding family in the Norwegian Arctic. "Perhaps that fosters the chance to change your outlook or trigger some humbleness," she adds.

A Celebration to Traditional Ways

The labyrinthine structure is one of several elements in Sara's absorbing exhibition showcasing the traditions, knowledge, and beliefs of the Sámi, the sole native group in Europe. Semi-nomadic, the Sámi number approximately 100,000 people ranged across the Norwegian north, Finland, the Swedish Lapland, and the Russian Arctic (an area they call Sápmi). They have endured persecution, cultural suppression, and suppression of their language by all four countries. With an emphasis on the reindeer, an animal at the heart of the Sámi mythology and founding narrative, the installation also spotlights the community's struggles relating to the global warming, property rights, and imperialism.

Metaphor in Components

On the extended access slope, there's a looming, 26-meter structure of skins entangled by utility lines. It can be read as a symbol for the political and economic systems restricting the Sámi. Part pylon, part celestial ladder, this section of the installation, titled Goavve-, refers to the Sámi word for an extreme weather phenomenon, in which thick coatings of ice form as changing temperatures liquefy and solidify again the snow, encasing the reindeers' primary winter food, moss. This phenomenon is a result of planetary warming, which is taking place up to four times faster in the Far North than in other regions.

A few years back, I visited Sara in Guovdageaidnu during a severe cold period and accompanied Sámi herders on their motorized sleds in freezing temperatures as they transported carts of supplementary feed on to the barren tundra to distribute by hand. The herd surrounded round us, digging the slippery ground in vain for lichen-covered morsels. This expensive and demanding process is having a drastic impact on herding practices—and on the animals' self-sufficiency. But the alternative is death. When such conditions become frequent, reindeer are perishing—a number from starvation, others drowning after falling into streams through thinning ice sheets. In a sense, the work is a tribute to them. "Through the stacking of components, in a way I'm introducing the goavvi to London," says Sara.

Contrasting Worldviews

The sculpture also highlights the sharp divergence between the industrial understanding of electricity as a commodity to be harnessed for gain and survival and the Sámi outlook of life force as an natural power in animals, humans, and nature. The gallery's legacy as a industrial facility is linked with this, as is what the Sámi see as environmental exploitation by Scandinavian states. As they strive to be leaders for renewable energy, these states have clashed with the Sámi over the construction of turbine fields, water power facilities, 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 tiny group to stand your ground when the reasons are grounded in global sustainability," Sara notes. "Mining practices has co-opted the rhetoric of environmentalism, but nonetheless it's just aiming to find alternative ways to persist in practices of expenditure."

Family Struggles

The artist and her relatives have personally conflicted with the national administration over its tightening rules on herding. A few years ago, Sara's brother embarked on a series of finally failed court actions over the required reduction of his livestock, supposedly to stop overgrazing. In support, Sara produced a four-year collection of creations titled Pile O'Sápmi including a massive screen of 400 cranial remains, which was displayed at the the show Documenta 14 and later purchased by the National Museum of Oslo, where it hangs in the entryway.

Art as Activism

Among the community, visual expression is the sole sphere in which they can be listened to by people of other nations. Recently, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|