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Guests to Tate Modern are used to surprising displays in its spacious Turbine Hall. They've basked under an artificial sun, descended down spiral slides, and observed automated jellyfish floating through the air. However this marks the initial time they will be venturing themselves in the detailed nose chambers of a reindeer. The current artist commission for this cavernous space—developed by Indigenous Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—welcomes visitors into a winding structure modeled after the expanded interior of a reindeer's nose cavities. Upon entering, they can meander around or unwind on pelts, tuning in on headphones to Sámi elders imparting narratives and wisdom.

Why the Nose?

Why the nose? It could seem quirky, but the installation celebrates a obscure biological feat: experts have uncovered that in less than one second, the reindeer's nose can warm the surrounding air it takes in by 80°C, enabling the creature to thrive in extreme Arctic climates. Scaling the nose to bigger than a person, Sara explains, "produces a sense of insignificance that you as a human being are not dominant over nature." The artist is a former reporter, writer for kids, and land defender, who is from a pastoral family in the far north of Norway. "Maybe that generates the chance to alter your perspective or trigger some humbleness," she adds.

An Homage to Traditional Ways

The maze-like design is part of a features in Sara's immersive art project celebrating the culture, knowledge, and beliefs of the Sámi, the continent's original inhabitants. Traditionally mobile, the Sámi number roughly 100,000 people spread across the Norwegian north, the Finnish Arctic, Sweden, and Russia's Kola Peninsula (an area they call Sápmi). They have experienced oppression, integration policies, and repression of their language by all four nations. With an emphasis on the reindeer, an animal at the heart of the Sámi cosmology and origin tale, the art also highlights the people's struggles relating to the environmental emergency, land dispossession, and colonialism.

Metaphor in Elements

On the extended access slope, there's a soaring, eighty-five-foot structure of reindeer hides trapped by electrical wires. It serves as a metaphor for the governance and financial structures restricting the Sámi. Like an electrical tower, part heavenly staircase, this part of the exhibit, called Goavve-, relates to the Sámi word for an severe climatic event, whereby solid sheets of ice develop as changing temperatures thaw and ice over the snow, encasing the reindeers' primary winter sustenance, moss. The condition is a result of climate change, which is occurring up to much more rapidly in the Arctic than globally.

Previously, I visited Sara in a remote town during a severe cold period and went with Sámi reindeer keepers on their Arctic vehicles in freezing temperatures as they transported containers of food pellets on to the wind-scoured tundra to distribute manually. These animals surrounded round us, scratching the slippery ground in vain attempts for lichen-covered morsels. This costly and laborious process is having a drastic influence on reindeer husbandry—and on the animals' natural survival. But the other option is starvation. As goavvi winters become commonplace, reindeer are perishing—a number from hunger, others suffocating after sinking in streams through unstable frozen surfaces. In a sense, the work is a memorial to them. "Through the stacking of components, in a way I'm bringing the condition to London," says Sara.

Opposing Perspectives

The sculpture also underscores the stark contrast between the modern view of power as a asset to be harnessed for gain and survival and the Sámi outlook of vitality as an natural essence in creatures, individuals, and nature. This venue's legacy as a coal and oil power station is tied up in this, as is what the Sámi consider eco-imperialism by Scandinavian states. As they strive to be exemplars for clean sources, Scandinavian countries have clashed with the Sámi over the construction of turbine fields, water power facilities, and mines on their traditional territory; the Sámi assert their fundamental freedoms, incomes, and traditions are at risk. "It's hard being such a limited population to protect your rights when the reasons are grounded in global sustainability," Sara notes. "Resource exploitation has adopted the discourse of ecology, but still it's just aiming to find alternative ways to persist in habits of use."

Individual Struggles

Sara and her relatives have personally conflicted with the state authorities over its increasingly stringent policies on reindeer management. Previously, Sara's sibling embarked on a series of ultimately unsuccessful legal cases over the forced culling of his livestock, supposedly to stop excessive feeding. As a show of solidarity, Sara created a four-year set of pieces named Pile O'Sápmi featuring a colossal drape of four hundred cranial remains, which was exhibited at the 2017's art exhibition Documenta 14 and later purchased by the National Museum of Oslo, where it is displayed in the entryway.

Art as Awareness

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