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Visitors to Tate Modern are accustomed to unexpected displays in its vast Turbine Hall. They have basked under an man-made sun, descended down amusement rides, and seen robotic sea creatures drifting through the air. Yet this marks the initial time they will be immersing themselves in the complex nose cavities of a reindeer. The newest artist commission for this immense space—designed by Native Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—welcomes visitors into a maze-like structure inspired by the enlarged inside of a reindeer's nose airways. Once inside, they can meander around or unwind on reindeer hides, tuning in on earphones to Sámi elders telling stories and insights.

The Significance of the Nose

What's the focus on the nose? It could appear playful, but the exhibit celebrates a obscure scientific wonder: researchers have discovered that in less than one second, the reindeer's nose can heat the surrounding air it inhales by 80°C, helping the creature to survive in inhospitable Arctic temperatures. Expanding the nose to human-scale dimensions, Sara notes, "generates a sense of insignificance that you as a human being are not dominant over nature." Sara is a former writer, writer for kids, and environmental activist, who hails from a reindeer-herding family in northern Norway. "Perhaps that creates the possibility to alter your perspective or trigger some humbleness," she adds.

A Celebration to Traditional Ways

The maze-like design is part of a features in Sara's absorbing art project celebrating the heritage, knowledge, and worldview of the Sámi, the continent's original inhabitants. Partially migratory, the Sámi total roughly 100,000 people distributed across the Norwegian north, Finland, Sweden, and Russia's Kola Peninsula (an region they call Sápmi). They've experienced persecution, forced assimilation, and suppression of their language by all four countries. By focusing on the reindeer, an animal at the heart of the Sámi mythology and creation story, the installation also draws attention to the people's issues relating to the global warming, land dispossession, and colonialism.

Symbolism in Elements

Along the lengthy access incline, there's a towering, 26-metre sculpture of skins ensnared by electrical wires. It serves as a analogy for the political and economic systems constraining the Sámi. Like an electrical tower, part spiritual ascent, this component of the installation, called Goavve-, refers to the Sámi term for an severe climatic event, wherein thick layers of ice develop as varying conditions thaw and ice over the snow, encasing the reindeers' main cold-season sustenance, fungus. The condition is a result of climate change, which is happening up to at an accelerated rate in the Polar region than in other regions.

Previously, I visited Sara in Guovdageaidnu during a icy season and went with Sámi pastoralists on their snowmobiles in freezing temperatures as they carried carts of animal nutrition on to the barren Arctic plains to dispense by hand. The herd crowded round us, pawing the icy ground in vain for lichen-covered morsels. This expensive and labour-intensive method is having a severe effect on reindeer husbandry—and on the animals' natural survival. However the alternative is malnutrition. When such conditions become commonplace, reindeer are dying—a number from starvation, others suffocating after plunging into water bodies through prematurely melting ice. In a sense, the work is a tribute to them. "Through the stacking of components, in a way I'm introducing the phenomenon to London," says Sara.

Diverging Perspectives

The installation also highlights the stark difference between the industrial understanding of power as a resource to be harnessed for gain and livelihood and the Sámi worldview of vitality as an inherent life force in creatures, humans, and nature. Tate Modern's past as a fossil fuel plant is tied up in this, as is what the Sámi view as environmental exploitation by Nordic countries. As they strive to be leaders for renewable energy, Scandinavian countries have locked horns with the Sámi over the construction of turbine fields, river barriers, and digging operations on their native soil; the Sámi argue their legal protections, incomes, and culture are at risk. "It's hard being such a limited population to defend yourself when the justifications are grounded in global sustainability," Sara comments. "Resource exploitation has adopted the discourse of ecology, but nonetheless it's just attempting to find better ways to maintain patterns of consumption."

Personal Struggles

Sara and her kin have personally clashed with the Norwegian government over its tightening regulations on animal husbandry. A few years ago, Sara's brother initiated a sequence of unsuccessful court actions over the required reduction of his herd, apparently to stop excessive feeding. To back him, Sara produced a multi-year series of pieces named Pile O'Sápmi including a massive curtain of four hundred reindeer skulls, which was shown at the 2017 show Documenta 14 and later obtained by the National Museum of Oslo, where it hangs in the lobby.

Creative Expression as Activism

For numerous Indigenous people, art seems the only domain in which they can be listened to by people of other nations. In 2022, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|