Visitors to the renowned gallery are accustomed to unusual experiences in its spacious Turbine Hall. They have basked under an simulated sun, descended down spiral slides, and seen AI-powered sea creatures drifting through the air. Yet this marks the inaugural time they will be immersing themselves in the detailed nose passages of a reindeer. The current artistic project for this huge space—created by Native Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—invites gallerygoers into a labyrinthine structure modeled after the scaled-up inside of a reindeer's nose passages. Upon entering, they can wander around or relax on skins, tuning in on earphones to Sámi elders telling tales and knowledge.
What's the focus on the nose? It could seem playful, but the installation pays tribute to a rarely recognized natural marvel: experts have discovered that in under a second, the reindeer's nose can raise the temperature of the ambient air it breathes in by eighty degrees, helping the animal to survive in extreme Arctic temperatures. Expanding the nose to human-scale dimensions, Sara says, "generates a sense of smallness that you as a human being are not in control over nature." She is a former writer, young adult author, and environmental activist, who hails from a herding family in the far north of Norway. "Possibly that creates the potential to shift your viewpoint or spark some modesty," she states.
The winding installation is part of a components in Sara's absorbing commission celebrating the heritage, understanding, and philosophy of the Sámi, the continent's original inhabitants. Traditionally mobile, the Sámi count roughly 100,000 people ranged across northern Norway, the Finnish Arctic, the Swedish Lapland, and the Kola region (an territory they call Sápmi). They've experienced oppression, forced assimilation, and eradication of their dialect by all four countries. Through highlighting the reindeer, an creature at the heart of the Sámi cosmology and origin tale, the installation also highlights the community's struggles connected to the global warming, loss of territory, and external control.
Along the lengthy entry incline, there's a soaring, 26-meter formation of pelts entangled by utility lines. It serves as a analogy for the societal frameworks limiting the Sámi. Partly a utility pole, part celestial ladder, this component of the artwork, called Goavve-, relates to the Sámi term for an harsh environmental condition, in which thick layers of ice form as changing temperatures melt and ice over the snow, trapping the reindeers' main winter sustenance, moss. This phenomenon is a consequence of global heating, which is happening up to four times faster in the Far North than elsewhere.
A few years back, I met with Sara in a remote town during a severe cold period and accompanied Sámi reindeer keepers on their Arctic vehicles in chilly conditions as they carried containers of animal nutrition on to the exposed frozen landscape to dispense through labor. The herd crowded round us, scratching the frozen ground in vain attempts for vegetative morsels. This costly and labour-intensive method is having a drastic impact on reindeer husbandry—and on the animals' natural survival. However the alternative is malnutrition. As goavvi winters become commonplace, reindeer are perishing—some from lack of food, others submerging after sinking in streams through prematurely melting ice. To some extent, the installation is a tribute to them. "With the layering of elements, in a way I'm transporting the goavvi to London," says Sara.
The installation also underscores the sharp divergence between the industrial understanding of energy as a commodity to be harnessed for gain and existence and the Sámi worldview of life force as an natural essence in creatures, individuals, and land. The gallery's history as a fossil fuel plant is connected to this, as is what the Sámi see as green colonialism by Nordic countries. While attempting to be exemplars for sustainable power, these states have locked horns with the Sámi over the building of turbine fields, water power facilities, and mines on their traditional territory; the Sámi assert their fundamental freedoms, livelihoods, and traditions are threatened. "It's challenging being such a tiny group to stand your ground when the reasons are rooted in environmental protection," Sara observes. "Resource exploitation has co-opted the discourse of environmentalism, but yet it's just aiming to find more suitable ways to continue habits of consumption."
She and her kin have themselves disagreed with the state authorities over its tightening policies on herding. In 2016, Sara's sibling undertook a series of finally failed lawsuits over the required reduction of his herd, apparently to stop overgrazing. In support, Sara created a extended collection of creations named Pile O'Sápmi featuring a colossal curtain of numerous cranial remains, which was shown at the 2017 art exhibition Documenta 14 and later acquired by the National Museum of Oslo, where it resides in the entrance.
For numerous Indigenous people, creative work is the exclusive domain in which they can be listened to by outsiders. Two years ago, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|
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