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Attendees to Tate Modern are familiar to surprising encounters in its spacious Turbine Hall. They've basked under an man-made sun, glided down amusement rides, and witnessed AI-powered sea creatures drifting through the air. However this marks the inaugural time they will be engaging themselves in the intricate nasal cavities of a reindeer. The current artistic project for this cavernous space—designed by Indigenous Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—encourages gallerygoers into a labyrinthine structure based on the enlarged inside of a reindeer's nasal passages. Once inside, they can wander around or chill out on pelts, tuning in on earphones to Sámi elders telling narratives and insights.

Why the Nose?

What's the focus on the nose? It may appear playful, but the installation pays tribute to a little-known natural marvel: scientists have uncovered that in a fraction of a second, the reindeer's nose can heat the surrounding air it takes in by 80°C, helping the creature to survive in harsh Arctic conditions. Expanding the nose to bigger than a person, Sara explains, "creates a perception of smallness that you as a person are not superior over nature." The artist is a former journalist, young adult author, and land defender, who is from a pastoral family in the Norwegian Arctic. "Perhaps that creates the possibility to change your outlook or trigger some humility," she states.

An Homage to Indigenous Heritage

The winding structure is among various elements in Sara's immersive exhibition honoring the culture, science, and beliefs of the Sámi, the continent's original inhabitants. Traditionally mobile, the Sámi number approximately 100,000 people ranged across the Norwegian north, the Finnish Arctic, the Swedish Lapland, and the Russian Arctic (an territory they call Sápmi). They have experienced discrimination, integration policies, and suppression of their dialect by all four states. By focusing on the reindeer, an creature at the core of the Sámi mythology and creation story, the work also spotlights the people's issues relating to the environmental emergency, loss of territory, and colonialism.

Symbolism in Materials

Along the extended access slope, there's a towering, eighty-five-foot sculpture of skins entangled by power and light cables. It serves as a analogy for the governance and financial structures limiting the Sámi. Partly a utility pole, part celestial ladder, this part of the artwork, titled Goavve-, points to the Sámi name for an severe climatic event, wherein dense sheets of ice develop as fluctuating conditions thaw and ice over the snow, locking in the reindeers' primary winter sustenance, lichen. This phenomenon is a result of global heating, which is occurring up to much more rapidly in the Far North than elsewhere.

Three years ago, I traveled to see Sara in the Norwegian far north during a severe cold period and went with Sámi herders on their snowmobiles in freezing temperatures as they carried containers of supplementary feed on to the exposed Arctic plains to dispense manually. The reindeer surrounded round us, pawing the slippery ground in vain attempts for lichen-covered bits. This costly and laborious method is having a drastic influence on reindeer husbandry—and on the animals' natural survival. However the alternative is malnutrition. When such conditions become frequent, reindeer are dying—a number from hunger, others suffocating after falling into water bodies through unstable frozen surfaces. On one level, the work is a monument to them. "Through the stacking of elements, in a way I'm bringing the goavvi to London," says Sara.

Opposing Perspectives

The installation also emphasizes the stark divergence between the modern understanding of electricity as a asset to be harnessed for gain and existence and the Sámi worldview of energy as an innate essence in creatures, humans, and nature. Tate Modern's past as a industrial facility is tied up in this, as is what the Sámi see as eco-imperialism by Scandinavian states. As they strive to be exemplars for sustainable power, Nordic nations have locked horns with the Sámi over the building of windfarms, water power facilities, and digging operations on their native soil; the Sámi argue their human rights, livelihoods, and way of life are at risk. "It's hard being such a tiny group to protect your rights when the reasons are rooted in environmental protection," Sara comments. "Extractivism has adopted the language of ecology, but nonetheless it's just striving to find alternative ways to persist in habits of expenditure."

Individual Struggles

The artist and her relatives have personally clashed with the Norwegian government over its tightening rules on animal husbandry. Previously, Sara's sibling initiated a set of finally failed legal cases over the mandatory slaughter of his animals, ostensibly to stop vegetation depletion. To back him, Sara developed a multi-year series of creations called Pile O'Sápmi comprising a huge screen of numerous animal bones, which was exhibited at the 2017 art exhibition Documenta 14 and later purchased by the national institution, where it resides in the lobby.

Art as Advocacy

For many Sámi, creative work is the only realm in which they can be listened to by people of other nations. Recently, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|