🔗 Share this article

Guests to the renowned gallery are accustomed to unusual encounters in its spacious Turbine Hall. They've relaxed under an artificial sun, slid down spiral slides, and observed AI-powered jellyfish floating through the air. Yet this marks the first time they will be immersing themselves in the intricate nasal cavities of a reindeer. The latest artist commission for this immense space—created by Indigenous Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—welcomes patrons into a winding construction based on the enlarged interior of a reindeer's nasal passages. Inside, they can wander around or relax on reindeer hides, tuning in on headphones to tribal seniors imparting stories and insights.

Focus on the Nasal Passages

Why choose the nasal structure? It may sound whimsical, but the artwork honors a rarely recognized scientific wonder: experts have found that in a fraction of a second, the reindeer's nose can raise the temperature of the incoming air it takes in by 80 degrees celsius, helping the animal to endure in harsh Arctic climates. Enlarging the nose to bigger than a person, Sara explains, "produces a feeling of insignificance that you as a person are not in control over nature." She is a former writer, young adult author, and rights advocate, who comes from a herding family in the far north of Norway. "Maybe that fosters the possibility to shift your perspective or evoke some humility," she adds.

A Tribute to Traditional Ways

The labyrinthine structure is one of several elements in Sara's absorbing exhibition showcasing the heritage, knowledge, and worldview of the Sámi, the continent's original inhabitants. Partially migratory, the Sámi count about 100,000 people spread across northern Norway, Finland, Sweden, and the Russian Arctic (an territory they call Sápmi). They have endured persecution, forced assimilation, and suppression of their dialect by all four nations. Through highlighting the reindeer, an animal at the center of the Sámi cosmology and creation story, the work also draws attention to the community's struggles associated with the global warming, land dispossession, and colonialism.

Symbolism in Materials

At the lengthy entry slope, there's a towering, eighty-five-foot formation of skins trapped by utility lines. It can be read as a metaphor for the political and economic systems restricting the Sámi. Like an electrical tower, part heavenly staircase, this part of the exhibit, named Goavve-, refers to the Sámi name for an severe climatic event, wherein thick sheets of ice develop as varying weather melt and ice over the snow, locking in the reindeers' main winter sustenance, moss. Goavvi is a outcome of climate change, which is occurring up to four times faster in the Far North than globally.

Three years ago, I traveled to see Sara in a remote town during a icy season and accompanied Sámi reindeer keepers on their snowmobiles in biting cold as they transported trailers of food pellets on to the exposed frozen landscape to distribute by hand. The reindeer gathered round us, digging the slippery ground in vain attempts for lichen-covered pieces. This resource-intensive and laborious process is having a drastic impact on herding practices—and on the animals' independence. Yet the alternative is death. As these icy periods become commonplace, reindeer are dying—some from starvation, others drowning after plunging into streams through thinning ice sheets. On one level, the installation is a tribute to them. "By overlapping of components, in a way I'm bringing the condition to London," says Sara.

Opposing Perspectives

This artwork also highlights the clear divergence between the industrial interpretation of power as a commodity to be harnessed for profit and survival and the Sámi philosophy of energy as an innate power in animals, individuals, and land. The gallery's history as a fossil fuel plant is connected to this, as is what the Sámi consider environmental exploitation by Nordic countries. In their efforts to be exemplars for clean sources, these states have clashed with the Sámi over the construction of windfarms, hydroelectric dams, and mines on their ancestral land; the Sámi contend their legal protections, incomes, and traditions are threatened. "It's challenging being such a limited population to stand your ground when the justifications are grounded in global sustainability," Sara notes. "Extractivism has appropriated the rhetoric of ecology, but yet it's just striving to find more suitable ways to maintain practices of consumption."

Family Challenges

Sara and her kin have personally conflicted with the Norwegian government over its tightening rules on herding. A few years ago, Sara's sibling undertook a sequence of unsuccessful court actions over the mandatory slaughter of his animals, apparently to stop overgrazing. In support, Sara produced a multi-year collection of artworks named Pile O'Sápmi featuring a huge drape of numerous cranial remains, which was exhibited at the 2017's art exhibition Documenta 14 and later acquired by the public gallery, where it resides in the entryway.

Art as Awareness

Among the community, creative work seems the exclusive sphere in which they can be understood by the global community. Two years ago, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|