Visitors to the renowned gallery are used to surprising encounters in its vast Turbine Hall. They've relaxed under an simulated sun, slid down helter skelters, and seen robotic sea creatures drifting through the air. However this marks the first time they will be venturing themselves in the intricate nasal chambers of a reindeer. The newest creative installation for this cavernous space—created by Indigenous Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—welcomes patrons into a labyrinthine construction based on the scaled-up interior of a reindeer's nose airways. Inside, they can wander around or unwind on skins, listening on headphones to Sámi elders sharing tales and insights.
Why the nose? It may appear whimsical, but the exhibit pays tribute to a little-known scientific wonder: scientists have uncovered that in a fraction of a second, the reindeer's nose can heat the incoming air it takes in by 80 degrees celsius, helping the animal to thrive in inhospitable Arctic temperatures. Scaling the nose to larger than human size, Sara explains, "creates a sense of inferiority that you as a person are not in control over nature." She is a former journalist, young adult author, and rights advocate, who hails from a pastoral family in the Norwegian Arctic. "Maybe that generates the chance to change your outlook or evoke some humility," she states.
The winding design is among various features in Sara's absorbing exhibition showcasing the heritage, knowledge, and beliefs of the Sámi, Europe's only Indigenous people. Semi-nomadic, the Sámi total approximately 100,000 people ranged across the Norwegian north, the Finnish Arctic, Sweden, and the Russian Arctic (an region they call Sápmi). They've faced discrimination, forced assimilation, and eradication of their dialect by all four countries. By focusing on the reindeer, an creature at the heart of the Sámi belief system and creation story, the art also spotlights the people's issues connected to the climate crisis, property rights, and colonialism.
On the extended access ramp, there's a towering, eighty-five-foot formation of pelts trapped by electrical wires. It can be read as a analogy for the governance and financial structures constraining the Sámi. Like an electrical tower, part celestial ladder, this section of the artwork, titled Goavve-, points to the Sámi word for an extreme weather phenomenon, in which thick layers of ice appear as changing conditions liquefy and refreeze the snow, locking in the reindeers' primary cold-season nourishment, moss. This phenomenon is a consequence of planetary warming, which is occurring up to much more rapidly in the Far North than globally.
A few years back, I visited Sara in the Norwegian far north during a icy season and accompanied Sámi pastoralists on their motorized sleds in biting cold as they hauled containers of supplementary feed on to the wind-scoured tundra to dispense by hand. The reindeer surrounded round us, pawing the slippery ground in vain for vegetative morsels. This costly and labour-intensive method is having a significant influence on reindeer husbandry—and on the animals' independence. But the choice is starvation. As goavvi winters become frequent, reindeer are succumbing—a number from hunger, others drowning after sinking in streams through thinning ice sheets. To some extent, the work is a tribute to them. "By overlapping of materials, in a way I'm introducing the condition to London," says Sara.
The sculpture also highlights the stark divergence between the industrial interpretation of electricity as a commodity to be utilized for gain and survival and the Sámi philosophy of vitality as an natural life force in creatures, humans, and the environment. Tate Modern's history as a industrial facility is linked with this, as is what the Sámi view as environmental exploitation by regional governments. As they strive to be standard bearers for sustainable power, Scandinavian countries have disagreed with the Sámi over the construction of wind energy projects, river barriers, and digging operations on their native soil; the Sámi contend their fundamental freedoms, ways of life, and culture are threatened. "It's very difficult being such a limited population to protect your rights when the justifications are rooted in saving the world," Sara comments. "Extractivism has appropriated the discourse of environmentalism, but yet it's just striving to find better ways to maintain patterns of use."
Sara and her relatives have themselves clashed with the state authorities over its ever-stricter policies on reindeer management. Previously, Sara's sibling undertook a series of ultimately unsuccessful legal cases over the forced culling of his herd, ostensibly to stop excessive feeding. To back him, Sara developed a extended set of artworks called Pile O'Sápmi including a huge screen of numerous reindeer skulls, which was displayed at the 2017's event Documenta 14 and later purchased by the National Museum of Oslo, where it hangs in the entryway.
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