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Guests to Tate Modern are familiar to unusual experiences in its spacious Turbine Hall. They've basked under an man-made sun, slid down helter skelters, and witnessed automated jellyfish drifting through the air. Yet this marks the first time they will be engaging themselves in the detailed nasal cavities of a reindeer. The latest artistic project for this huge space—designed by Indigenous Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—invites gallerygoers into a labyrinthine design modeled after the enlarged interior of a reindeer's nose airways. Inside, they can wander around or relax on skins, listening on headphones to tribal seniors sharing stories and knowledge.

Focus on the Nasal Passages

Why choose the nasal structure? It may seem playful, but the artwork pays tribute to a rarely recognized natural marvel: scientists have uncovered that in less than one second, the reindeer's nose can raise the temperature of the ambient air it inhales by 80 degrees celsius, helping the animal to endure in extreme Arctic temperatures. Enlarging the nose to human-scale dimensions, Sara explains, "produces a feeling of smallness that you as a human being are not in control over nature." The artist is a former reporter, children's author, and environmental activist, who is from a pastoral family in the Norwegian Arctic. "Perhaps that fosters the chance to alter your perspective or trigger some modesty," she adds.

A Tribute to Traditional Ways

The labyrinthine design is one of several components in Sara's immersive art project showcasing the traditions, understanding, and beliefs of the Sámi, the sole native group in Europe. Semi-nomadic, the Sámi total approximately 100,000 people spread across the Norwegian north, Finland, Sweden, and Russia's Kola Peninsula (an territory they call Sápmi). They have experienced discrimination, integration policies, and repression of their dialect by all four countries. By focusing on the reindeer, an creature at the core of the Sámi belief system and creation story, the installation also spotlights the community's challenges relating to the climate crisis, land dispossession, and imperialism.

Meaning in Materials

Along the extended entry incline, there's a looming, 26-metre structure of skins ensnared by power and light cables. It serves as a symbol for the political and economic systems limiting the Sámi. Like an electrical tower, part heavenly staircase, this part of the exhibit, named Goavve-, relates to the Sámi name for an extreme weather phenomenon, whereby dense sheets of ice form as varying weather melt and refreeze the snow, encasing the reindeers' key cold-season food, lichen. The condition is a outcome of planetary warming, which is happening up to at an accelerated rate in the Arctic than in other regions.

Previously, I traveled to see Sara in a remote town during a goavvi winter and went with Sámi herders on their Arctic vehicles in biting cold as they carried containers of supplementary feed on to the wind-scoured tundra to provide through labor. The herd surrounded round us, digging the slippery ground in vain attempts for mossy bits. This expensive and demanding procedure is having a drastic impact on herding practices—and on the animals' natural survival. However the alternative is starvation. When such conditions become commonplace, reindeer are perishing—some from starvation, others suffocating after plunging into lakes and rivers through unstable frozen surfaces. To some extent, the art is a monument to them. "By overlapping of components, in a way I'm introducing the condition to London," says Sara.

Contrasting Worldviews

The installation also underscores the stark difference between the western interpretation of power as a resource to be harnessed for profit and livelihood and the Sámi outlook of life force as an inherent life force in creatures, individuals, and nature. The gallery's legacy as a industrial facility is linked with this, as is what the Sámi see as environmental exploitation by Scandinavian states. In their efforts to be standard bearers for sustainable power, Nordic nations have clashed with the Sámi over the construction of wind energy projects, hydroelectric dams, and digging operations on their native soil; the Sámi contend their fundamental freedoms, incomes, and way of life are at risk. "It's hard being such a tiny group to defend yourself when the reasons are grounded in saving the world," Sara observes. "Resource exploitation has co-opted the language of ecology, but nonetheless it's just striving to find alternative ways to maintain practices of consumption."

Family Challenges

Sara and her relatives have personally disagreed with the national administration over its ever-stricter regulations on animal husbandry. Previously, Sara's brother embarked on a sequence of ultimately unsuccessful court actions over the forced culling of his animals, ostensibly to stop overgrazing. In support, Sara created a extended collection of creations named Pile O'Sápmi featuring a huge screen of numerous animal bones, which was shown at the the event Documenta 14 and later purchased by the national institution, where it hangs in the entrance.

Creative Expression as Advocacy

For numerous Indigenous people, creative work appears the only sphere in which they can be heard by people of other nations. In 2022, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|