🔗 Share this article

Guests to the renowned gallery are accustomed to unusual encounters in its spacious Turbine Hall. They've sunbathed under an simulated sun, slid down amusement rides, and witnessed automated sea creatures drifting through the air. But this marks the initial time they will be immersing themselves in the intricate nose chambers of a reindeer. The current artistic project for this huge space—developed by Indigenous Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—encourages patrons into a labyrinthine design inspired by the enlarged inside of a reindeer's nose airways. Once inside, they can wander around or unwind on skins, listening on earphones to community leaders sharing tales and wisdom.

Why the Nose?

What's the focus on the nose? It might seem quirky, but the installation pays tribute to a obscure scientific wonder: scientists have discovered that in under a second, the reindeer's nose can heat the incoming air it inhales by 80 degrees celsius, helping the animal to endure in extreme Arctic temperatures. Enlarging the nose to human-scale dimensions, Sara says, "produces a perception of insignificance that you as a individual are not in control over nature." Sara is a former writer, young adult author, and land defender, who is from a herding family in the Norwegian Arctic. "Maybe that creates the potential to shift your outlook or spark some humility," she adds.

An Homage to Indigenous Heritage

The winding structure is one of several components in Sara's engaging art project showcasing the heritage, knowledge, and worldview of the Sámi, the sole native group in Europe. Partially migratory, the Sámi count roughly 100,000 people distributed across northern Norway, the Finnish Arctic, the Swedish Lapland, and Russia's Kola Peninsula (an area they call Sápmi). They have endured discrimination, forced assimilation, and repression of their dialect by all four countries. Through highlighting the reindeer, an creature at the heart of the Sámi mythology and founding narrative, the work also draws attention to the people's challenges associated with the environmental emergency, property rights, and imperialism.

Meaning in Elements

Along the long entrance ramp, there's a looming, eighty-five-foot sculpture of reindeer hides ensnared by electrical wires. It represents a symbol for the societal frameworks restricting the Sámi. Part pylon, part heavenly staircase, this section of the exhibit, titled Goavve-, refers to the Sámi name for an severe climatic event, in which solid sheets of ice form as varying weather liquefy and solidify again the snow, trapping the reindeers' key winter nourishment, lichen. Goavvi is a consequence of climate change, which is happening up to at an accelerated rate in the Far North than elsewhere.

Previously, I visited Sara in a remote town during a icy season and joined Sámi herders on their snowmobiles in chilly conditions as they carried trailers of supplementary feed on to the barren tundra to dispense by hand. The herd crowded round us, scratching the icy ground in vain attempts for lichen-covered morsels. This resource-intensive and laborious method is having a drastic influence on reindeer husbandry—and on the animals' independence. However the alternative is death. As goavvi winters become commonplace, reindeer are dying—a number from hunger, others suffocating after plunging into lakes and rivers through prematurely melting ice. To some extent, the installation is a tribute to them. "With the layering of elements, in a way I'm introducing the phenomenon to London," says Sara.

Diverging Belief Systems

The sculpture also highlights the stark difference between the industrial view of energy as a commodity to be utilized for profit and livelihood and the Sámi philosophy of vitality as an natural essence in animals, people, and the environment. The gallery's past as a fossil fuel plant is tied up in this, as is what the Sámi view as eco-imperialism by Scandinavian states. In their efforts to be standard bearers for renewable energy, Scandinavian countries have locked horns with the Sámi over the building of turbine fields, water power facilities, and mines on their ancestral land; the Sámi assert their human rights, ways of life, and way of life are threatened. "It's hard being such a tiny group to stand your ground when the reasons are based on global sustainability," Sara observes. "Extractivism has adopted the language of environmentalism, but yet it's just aiming to find better ways to continue practices of expenditure."

Family Challenges

Sara and her kin have themselves conflicted with the Norwegian government over its ever-stricter regulations on reindeer management. In 2016, Sara's sibling undertook a sequence of ultimately unsuccessful legal cases over the required reduction of his livestock, supposedly to stop overgrazing. As a show of solidarity, Sara developed a four-year collection of pieces titled Pile O'Sápmi featuring a massive curtain of four hundred reindeer skulls, which was exhibited at the 2017 art exhibition Documenta 14 and later obtained by the national institution, where it is displayed in the entrance.

Creative Expression as Advocacy

Among the community, art is the exclusive sphere in which they can be listened to by people of other nations. In 2022, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|