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Visitors to Tate Modern are used to unusual experiences in its expansive Turbine Hall. They've basked under an artificial sun, slid down amusement rides, and witnessed automated sea creatures floating through the air. But this marks the inaugural time they will be venturing themselves in the detailed nose chambers of a reindeer. The newest artistic project for this huge space—created by Native Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—welcomes patrons into a maze-like construction inspired by the enlarged interior of a reindeer's nose cavities. Inside, they can meander around or relax on pelts, listening on earphones to Sámi elders telling narratives and wisdom.

Focus on the Nasal Passages

Why choose the nasal structure? It could appear whimsical, but the installation pays tribute to a little-known natural marvel: experts have discovered that in a fraction of a second, the reindeer's nose can heat the surrounding air it inhales by 80 degrees celsius, enabling the animal to thrive in extreme Arctic climates. Enlarging the nose to human-scale dimensions, Sara explains, "generates a feeling of smallness that you as a human being are not superior over nature." The artist is a former reporter, children's author, and rights advocate, who comes from a reindeer-herding family in the Norwegian Arctic. "Perhaps that generates the potential to change your perspective or spark some modesty," she adds.

A Celebration to Traditional Ways

The labyrinthine structure is part of a components in Sara's immersive exhibition honoring the culture, understanding, and philosophy of the Sámi, Europe's only Indigenous people. Semi-nomadic, the Sámi number roughly 100,000 people ranged across northern Norway, Finland, the Swedish Lapland, and the Kola region (an area they call Sápmi). They've faced oppression, cultural suppression, and eradication of their language by all four nations. Through highlighting the reindeer, an creature at the core of the Sámi cosmology and origin tale, the work also spotlights the community's struggles associated with the climate crisis, loss of territory, and imperialism.

Metaphor in Materials

Along the lengthy entry ramp, there's a looming, eighty-five-foot structure of reindeer hides trapped by electrical wires. It can be read as a metaphor for the societal frameworks constraining the Sámi. Partly a utility pole, part heavenly staircase, this component of the installation, named Goavve-, refers to the Sámi name for an extreme weather phenomenon, whereby dense sheets of ice develop as varying weather liquefy and ice over the snow, locking in the reindeers' key cold-season sustenance, fungus. The condition is a result of planetary warming, which is taking place up to much more rapidly in the Polar region than in other regions.

A few years back, I traveled to see Sara in a remote town during a goavvi winter and joined Sámi pastoralists on their snowmobiles in chilly conditions as they hauled containers of animal nutrition on to the barren tundra to distribute by hand. The reindeer crowded round us, digging the icy ground in vain for lichen-covered pieces. This costly and demanding procedure is having a severe impact on herding practices—and on the animals' independence. But the alternative is malnutrition. When such conditions become frequent, reindeer are perishing—some from hunger, others suffocating after falling into streams through thinning ice sheets. In a sense, the work is a tribute to them. "By overlapping of components, in a way I'm bringing the goavvi to London," says Sara.

Diverging Perspectives

This artwork also highlights the clear contrast between the modern view of power as a resource to be harnessed for profit and livelihood and the Sámi worldview of energy as an inherent essence in creatures, humans, and the environment. The gallery's legacy as a fossil fuel plant is linked with this, as is what the Sámi view as eco-imperialism by Nordic countries. As they strive to be standard bearers for sustainable power, these states have locked horns with the Sámi over the construction of wind energy projects, water power facilities, and extraction sites on their native soil; the Sámi argue their legal protections, ways of life, and culture are threatened. "It's challenging being such a tiny group to protect your rights when the arguments are rooted in global sustainability," Sara comments. "Resource exploitation has adopted the discourse of ecology, but still it's just aiming to find alternative ways to continue patterns of consumption."

Personal Struggles

She and her kin have themselves disagreed with the state authorities over its tightening policies on animal husbandry. In 2016, Sara's sibling undertook a set of ultimately unsuccessful court actions over the required reduction of his livestock, apparently to stop excessive feeding. In support, Sara developed a extended collection of artworks called Pile O'Sápmi featuring a colossal drape of numerous cranial remains, which was shown at the the art exhibition Documenta 14 and later purchased by the National Museum of Oslo, where it hangs in the entrance.

Creative Expression as Activism

Among the community, creative work appears the exclusive sphere in which they can be listened to by people of other nations. Two years ago, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|