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Guests to Tate Modern are accustomed to unexpected encounters in its expansive Turbine Hall. They have basked under an artificial sun, descended down amusement rides, and observed robotic jellyfish drifting through the air. Yet this marks the initial time they will be immersing themselves in the detailed nose cavities of a reindeer. The latest artistic project for this huge space—created by Native Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—encourages patrons into a labyrinthine design inspired by the scaled-up interior of a reindeer's nasal passages. Upon entering, they can wander around or unwind on skins, tuning in on earphones to Sámi elders telling tales and wisdom.

Focus on the Nasal Passages

What's the focus on the nose? It might seem quirky, but the installation celebrates a rarely recognized natural marvel: researchers have uncovered that in a fraction of a second, the reindeer's nose can warm the ambient air it inhales by 80 degrees celsius, helping the creature to thrive in extreme Arctic climates. Enlarging the nose to larger than human size, Sara says, "produces a perception of inferiority that you as a individual are not superior over nature." She is a ex- journalist, children's author, and land defender, who comes from a herding family in the far north of Norway. "Possibly that creates the possibility to shift your perspective or trigger some humbleness," she adds.

A Tribute to Indigenous Heritage

The maze-like structure is among various elements in Sara's absorbing art project honoring the heritage, knowledge, and worldview of the Sámi, the sole native group in Europe. Traditionally mobile, the Sámi number approximately 100,000 people distributed across northern Norway, Finland, the Swedish Lapland, and the Russian Arctic (an territory they call Sápmi). They've experienced discrimination, forced assimilation, and repression of their dialect by all four states. By focusing on the reindeer, an creature at the heart of the Sámi mythology and origin tale, the work also highlights the community's challenges associated with the environmental emergency, loss of territory, and external control.

Symbolism in Components

At the extended entrance incline, there's a towering, 26-meter sculpture of skins ensnared by power and light cables. It serves as a analogy for the societal frameworks limiting the Sámi. Like an electrical tower, part celestial ladder, this component of the artwork, titled Goavve-, relates to the Sámi name for an extreme weather phenomenon, wherein dense coatings of ice appear as changing temperatures thaw and refreeze the snow, trapping the reindeers' primary cold-season nourishment, moss. The condition is a outcome of climate change, which is happening up to at an accelerated rate in the Arctic than globally.

Three years ago, I traveled to see Sara in a remote town during a severe cold period and accompanied Sámi pastoralists on their motorized sleds in biting cold as they hauled carts of food pellets on to the exposed frozen landscape to provide through labor. These animals surrounded round us, scratching the slippery ground in futility for mossy morsels. This expensive and demanding method is having a severe impact on reindeer husbandry—and on the animals' self-sufficiency. Yet the choice is starvation. As goavvi winters become routine, reindeer are succumbing—some from hunger, others submerging after falling into lakes and rivers through prematurely melting ice. On one level, the work is a memorial to them. "With the layering of materials, in a way I'm introducing the phenomenon to London," says Sara.

Contrasting Perspectives

The installation also highlights the sharp divergence between the modern understanding of electricity as a asset to be harnessed for profit and survival and the Sámi philosophy of energy as an innate life force in creatures, humans, and land. This venue's history as a industrial facility is connected to this, as is what the Sámi view as environmental exploitation by Nordic countries. In their efforts to be standard bearers for sustainable power, Scandinavian countries have clashed with the Sámi over the development of turbine fields, water power facilities, and mines on their ancestral land; the Sámi contend their human rights, incomes, and way of life are at risk. "It's very difficult being such a small minority to defend yourself when the arguments are rooted in saving the world," Sara observes. "Resource exploitation has co-opted the rhetoric of ecology, but nonetheless it's just attempting to find alternative ways to persist in patterns of consumption."

Family Struggles

The artist and her relatives have themselves disagreed with the Norwegian government over its ever-stricter rules on reindeer management. A few years ago, Sara's sibling undertook a sequence of finally failed lawsuits over the required reduction of his animals, ostensibly to stop vegetation depletion. In support, Sara developed a multi-year collection of creations titled Pile O'Sápmi including a massive drape of 400 reindeer skulls, which was shown at the 2017's event Documenta 14 and later purchased by the public gallery, where it is displayed in the lobby.

Creative Expression as Advocacy

For many Sámi, art seems the sole domain in which they can be understood by people of other nations. In 2022, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|