{"id":295621,"date":"2025-11-16T19:08:35","date_gmt":"2025-11-16T19:08:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/295621\/"},"modified":"2025-11-16T19:08:35","modified_gmt":"2025-11-16T19:08:35","slug":"the-canary-in-the-turbine-hall","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/295621\/","title":{"rendered":"The Canary in the Turbine Hall"},"content":{"rendered":"

LONDON \u2014\u00a0Electrical cables now run from floor to ceiling in the Tate Modern\u2019s cavernous Turbine Hall, its largest and most prestigious exhibition space \u2014 and the site where polluting coal fire once generated enormous amounts of electricity. In S\u00e1mi artist M\u00e1ret \u00c1nne Sara\u2019s monumental sculpture<\/a>, reindeer hides interweave the taut wires like the rungs of a ladder. Her juxtaposition of the industrial and the natural asks us to rethink what we mean by power \u2014 and reminds us that the infrastructures for generating energy have only been pushed out of sight for urbanites. They continue to have an enormous impact on the ecologies of more remote regions, and the people who live in them.\u00a0<\/p>\n

One of these regions is S\u00e1pmi, the territory of the Indigenous S\u00e1mi people spanning some of the northernmost parts of Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Russia. Members of Sara\u2019s family have been reindeer herders there for many generations. Here, the yoking of the reindeer hides to metal wires feels like a visceral visualization of how that way of life and unique relationship with the environment is now threatened by the climate crisis and mining, infrastructure, and power generation projects. But it also suggests that the power in the lit wires could be derived from the reindeer themselves, if we were willing to employ a different understanding of what \u201cpower\u201d means. <\/p>\n

One-half of the work\u2019s title, \u201cGoavve,\u201d is a S\u00e1mi term referring to a phenomenon of extreme weather in which fluctuating temperatures melt and re-freeze snow, resulting in hard ice crusts that the reindeer are unable to break through to find food in winter.\u00a0In choosing such a technical term, Sara seems to argue for a framework of power derived from Indigenous ancestral and ecological knowledge \u2014\u00a0not in the vague sense of \u201cwisdom\u201d but in the hard facts of science. This is a form of investigating and understanding that honors the more-than-human world, rather than seeking to subdue it. <\/p>\n

\"\"Installation view of M\u00e1ret \u00c1nne Sara, \u201cGoavve-Geabbil\u201d (2025)<\/p>\n

The second half of her installation is an inviting maze-like structure based on the reindeer\u2019s nose, a natural marvel designed to heat air to 175\u00b0F (~80\u00b0C) in a single second. Inside, there are seats covered in soft reindeer hide where visitors can listen to stories of S\u00e1pmi through headphones, while speakers also play the intermingled sounds of reindeer calls and joiking, a form of S\u00e1mi singing that evokes a specific person or place, such as a summer reindeer pasture. Scents also permeate the structure, from native plants to the artist\u2019s own breastmilk, although these are very subtle, almost to the point of being undetectable. Nevertheless, the experience is deliberately multisensory, an invitation to consider non-visual forms of perception \u2014 another way in which Sara advocates for alternative knowledge structures.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Many Europeans are not even aware that there are any Indigenous peoples left in Europe, so this commission will undoubtedly raise awareness of the plight of the S\u00e1mi people, as well as the potential power of their worldview. Notably, international recognition and understanding of S\u00e1mi culture have been on the rise in recent years, in great part through the dissemination of work by artists such as Sara herself at the Venice Biennale<\/a> and Outi Pieski at Tate St Ives<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

However, some have criticized<\/a> Sara\u2019s Turbine Hall project for not being big or spectacular enough, sometimes ignoring the content and, in particular, the context of her work. Certainly, it is not the most visually memorable installation that this space has ever seen \u2014 but it feels wrong to judge this work on what is absent. What is present is a nuanced and meditative exploration of an interconnected community and ecosystem on the brink of disaster, where temperature fluctuations and ongoing extractivism are damaging heritage and environment. The canary in the coal mine, as it were, for our lives in more temperate areas. We could all undoubtedly benefit from taking S\u00e1mi science seriously as we collectively hurtle toward even more cataclysmic changes.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\tInstallation view of M\u00e1ret \u00c1nne Sara, \u201cGoavve-Geabbil\u201d (2025)
\n\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\tDetail view of M\u00e1ret \u00c1nne Sara, \u201cGoavve-Geabbil\u201d (2025)<\/p>\n

Hyundai Commission: M\u00e1ret \u00c1nne Sara<\/a> continues at Tate Modern (Bankside London), through April 6, 2026. The exhibition is curated by Helen O\u2019Malley and Hannah Gorlizki. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LONDON \u2014\u00a0Electrical cables now run from floor to ceiling in the Tate Modern\u2019s cavernous Turbine Hall, its largest…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":295622,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[228,226,227,229,88,1150,13708,68232],"class_list":{"0":"post-295621","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-arts","9":"tag-arts-and-design","10":"tag-artsanddesign","11":"tag-design","12":"tag-entertainment","13":"tag-london","14":"tag-sculpture","15":"tag-tate-modern"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295621","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=295621"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295621\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/295622"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=295621"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=295621"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=295621"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}