🔗 Share this article

Visitors to the renowned gallery are familiar to unexpected encounters in its spacious Turbine Hall. They have sunbathed under an simulated sun, descended down helter skelters, and seen automated jellyfish drifting through the air. But this marks the first time they will be venturing themselves in the detailed nose passages of a reindeer. The current creative installation for this cavernous space—developed by Native Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—encourages gallerygoers into a maze-like design modeled after the scaled-up interior of a reindeer's nasal cavities. Upon entering, they can stroll around or chill out on reindeer hides, listening on earphones to Sámi elders sharing tales and insights.

Why the Nose?

Why the nose? It may appear quirky, but the exhibit celebrates a little-known biological feat: scientists have found that in less than one second, the reindeer's nose can raise the temperature of the ambient air it breathes in by 80°C, helping the animal to survive in harsh Arctic climates. Enlarging the nose to larger than human size, Sara explains, "generates a sense of insignificance that you as a human being are not dominant over nature." Sara is a former reporter, writer for kids, and environmental activist, who comes from a herding family in the far north of Norway. "Possibly that fosters the chance to shift your viewpoint or trigger some humbleness," she states.

An Homage to Traditional Ways

The winding design is one of several elements in Sara's absorbing commission honoring the heritage, understanding, and philosophy of the Sámi, Europe's only Indigenous people. Semi-nomadic, the Sámi count about 100,000 people distributed across northern Norway, Finland, Sweden, and the Russian Arctic (an region they call Sápmi). They've endured persecution, integration policies, and suppression of their language by all four countries. With an emphasis on the reindeer, an animal at the core of the Sámi belief system and origin tale, the installation also highlights the group's challenges associated with the environmental emergency, loss of territory, and colonialism.

Metaphor in Materials

On the lengthy entry incline, there's a looming, eighty-five-foot formation of reindeer hides ensnared by electrical wires. It represents a symbol for the political and economic systems restricting the Sámi. Like an electrical tower, part celestial ladder, this component of the installation, named Goavve-, points to the Sámi word for an severe climatic event, in which dense sheets of ice form as varying conditions liquefy and ice over the snow, locking in the reindeers' primary winter nourishment, fungus. This phenomenon is a result of planetary warming, which is occurring up to four times faster in the Far North than elsewhere.

A few years back, I visited Sara in a remote town during a severe cold period and joined Sámi reindeer keepers on their snowmobiles in chilly conditions as they hauled carts of animal nutrition on to the exposed frozen landscape to distribute by hand. These animals crowded round us, digging the icy ground in vain attempts for vegetative morsels. This costly and labour-intensive process is having a severe influence on animal rearing—and on the animals' self-sufficiency. But the alternative is starvation. As goavvi winters become commonplace, reindeer are succumbing—some from lack of food, others drowning after plunging into streams through thinning ice sheets. To some extent, the installation is a tribute to them. "Through the stacking of components, in a way I'm transporting the goavvi to London," says Sara.

Opposing Belief Systems

This artwork also underscores the sharp divergence between the industrial understanding of energy as a resource to be utilized for economic benefit and livelihood and the Sámi philosophy of vitality as an natural life force in creatures, humans, and the environment. This venue's history as a industrial facility is linked with this, as is what the Sámi consider environmental exploitation by Nordic countries. While attempting to be standard bearers for sustainable power, Nordic nations have clashed with the Sámi over the construction of turbine fields, river barriers, and extraction sites on their traditional territory; the Sámi assert their legal protections, livelihoods, and traditions are endangered. "It's hard being such a small minority to stand your ground when the reasons are based on global sustainability," Sara notes. "Resource exploitation has adopted the discourse of environmentalism, but still it's just attempting to find better ways to maintain habits of expenditure."

Personal Conflicts

She and her kin have personally conflicted with the Norwegian government over its ever-stricter policies on animal husbandry. A few years ago, Sara's sibling undertook a series of unsuccessful court actions over the required reduction of his animals, supposedly to stop overgrazing. As a show of solidarity, Sara created a multi-year series of pieces named Pile O'Sápmi including a massive drape of four hundred animal bones, which was displayed at the 2017's event Documenta 14 and later purchased by the public gallery, where it resides in the entrance.

The Role of Art in Advocacy

Among the community, creative work seems the exclusive sphere in which they can be heard by outsiders. In 2022, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|