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Attendees to Tate Modern are used to unusual experiences in its spacious Turbine Hall. They've basked under an simulated sun, slid down helter skelters, and seen automated jellyfish floating through the air. However this marks the inaugural time they will be engaging themselves in the intricate nasal cavities of a reindeer. The newest artistic project for this huge space—designed by Native Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—encourages patrons into a labyrinthine construction inspired by the enlarged interior of a reindeer's nose airways. Inside, they can stroll around or unwind on skins, listening on headphones to tribal seniors sharing stories and knowledge.

Why the Nose?

Why choose the nasal structure? It may seem quirky, but the installation honors a rarely recognized natural marvel: researchers have found that in under a second, the reindeer's nose can warm the surrounding air it breathes in by 80 degrees celsius, allowing the creature to survive in extreme Arctic climates. Expanding the nose to bigger than a person, Sara says, "creates a feeling of insignificance that you as a human being are not dominant over nature." The artist is a former journalist, children's author, and land defender, who hails from a herding family in the far north of Norway. "Maybe that fosters the potential to shift your viewpoint or evoke some humility," she states.

A Tribute to Indigenous Heritage

The winding design is among various features in Sara's immersive exhibition celebrating the culture, science, and philosophy of the Sámi, the sole native group in Europe. Traditionally mobile, the Sámi total approximately 100,000 people ranged across northern Norway, Finland, Sweden, and the Kola region (an area they call Sápmi). They have endured discrimination, integration policies, and repression of their tongue by all four countries. Through highlighting the reindeer, an animal at the core of the Sámi cosmology and origin tale, the installation also spotlights the group's challenges connected to the climate crisis, land dispossession, and imperialism.

Symbolism in Elements

Along the extended access ramp, there's a towering, eighty-five-foot structure of skins ensnared by electrical wires. It serves as a symbol for the governance and financial structures limiting the Sámi. Part pylon, part heavenly staircase, this section of the artwork, called Goavve-, refers to the Sámi term for an extreme weather phenomenon, in which dense coatings of ice appear as changing weather thaw and refreeze the snow, encasing the reindeers' main winter nourishment, fungus. The condition is a outcome of climate change, which is happening up to at an accelerated rate in the Far North than globally.

Three years ago, I met with Sara in a remote town during a icy season and went with Sámi reindeer keepers on their motorized sleds in freezing temperatures as they transported trailers of animal nutrition on to the exposed frozen landscape to distribute manually. The herd surrounded round us, scratching the slippery ground in vain attempts for lichen-covered bits. This resource-intensive and laborious process is having a drastic impact on herding practices—and on the animals' self-sufficiency. But the choice is starvation. As goavvi winters become routine, reindeer are perishing—a number from lack of food, others submerging after sinking in lakes and rivers through unstable frozen surfaces. To some extent, the art is a tribute to them. "By overlapping of components, in a way I'm introducing the condition to London," says Sara.

Opposing Perspectives

The sculpture also highlights the sharp difference between the industrial view of power as a resource to be exploited for profit and livelihood and the Sámi philosophy of energy as an inherent essence in animals, individuals, and the environment. Tate Modern's legacy as a coal and oil power station is tied up in this, as is what the Sámi see as eco-imperialism by regional governments. As they strive to be standard bearers for clean sources, Scandinavian countries have locked horns with the Sámi over the construction of wind energy projects, hydroelectric dams, and extraction sites on their ancestral land; the Sámi contend their fundamental freedoms, livelihoods, and way of life are endangered. "It's hard being such a tiny group to stand your ground when the justifications are based on environmental protection," Sara notes. "Mining practices has co-opted the rhetoric of sustainability, but still it's just aiming to find more suitable ways to maintain practices of consumption."

Family Struggles

The artist and her kin have personally clashed with the Norwegian government over its tightening policies on reindeer management. In 2016, Sara's sibling initiated a sequence of ultimately unsuccessful legal cases over the required reduction of his livestock, supposedly to stop vegetation depletion. In support, Sara developed a extended set of creations named Pile O'Sápmi featuring a massive screen of numerous cranial remains, which was displayed at the 2017 art exhibition Documenta 14 and later obtained by the National Museum of Oslo, where it hangs in the lobby.

Creative Expression as Awareness

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