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Guests to Tate Modern are used to unexpected experiences in its vast Turbine Hall. They've relaxed under an simulated sun, descended down amusement rides, and seen AI-powered jellyfish hovering through the air. However this marks the inaugural time they will be immersing themselves in the detailed nose chambers of a reindeer. The latest creative installation for this huge space—created by Native Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—welcomes gallerygoers into a winding structure inspired by the enlarged inside of a reindeer's nasal cavities. Upon entering, they can stroll around or relax on reindeer hides, tuning in on earphones to community leaders telling tales and knowledge.

The Significance of the Nose

Why choose the nasal structure? It may appear whimsical, but the artwork honors a obscure biological feat: scientists have discovered that in under a second, the reindeer's nose can warm the incoming air it inhales by eighty degrees, helping the animal to thrive in inhospitable Arctic climates. Enlarging the nose to human-scale dimensions, Sara notes, "produces a sense of insignificance that you as a person are not superior over nature." Sara is a ex- reporter, children's author, and environmental activist, who hails from a herding family in the Norwegian Arctic. "Maybe that fosters the possibility to alter your outlook or spark some humbleness," she states.

A Celebration to Traditional Ways

The labyrinthine installation is among various features in Sara's immersive commission celebrating the heritage, understanding, and philosophy of the Sámi, the sole native group in Europe. Semi-nomadic, the Sámi count approximately 100,000 people spread across northern Norway, the Finnish Arctic, Sweden, and the Kola region (an region they call Sápmi). They have experienced oppression, integration policies, and repression of their language by all four states. By focusing on the reindeer, an creature at the heart of the Sámi mythology and founding narrative, the art also draws attention to the community's challenges relating to the climate crisis, land dispossession, and imperialism.

Metaphor in Elements

Along the lengthy entry incline, there's a towering, 26-metre formation of pelts ensnared by electrical wires. It can be read as a metaphor for the societal frameworks constraining the Sámi. Part pylon, part heavenly staircase, this section of the artwork, named Goavve-, points to the Sámi name for an extreme weather phenomenon, in which solid sheets of ice appear as varying conditions melt and ice over the snow, locking in the reindeers' primary winter sustenance, fungus. Goavvi is a result of climate change, which is happening up to four times faster in the Far North than elsewhere.

Three years ago, I met with Sara in Guovdageaidnu during a goavvi winter and accompanied Sámi reindeer keepers on their snowmobiles in chilly conditions as they carried carts of animal nutrition on to the barren frozen landscape to provide by hand. These animals gathered round us, scratching the frozen ground in futility for mossy bits. This costly and demanding method is having a severe influence on animal rearing—and on the animals' independence. But the choice is death. When such conditions become commonplace, reindeer are dying—some from starvation, others suffocating after sinking in streams through thinning ice sheets. In a sense, the installation is a tribute to them. "By overlapping of elements, in a way I'm bringing the phenomenon to London," says Sara.

Contrasting Perspectives

The sculpture also emphasizes the stark divergence between the modern interpretation of electricity as a resource to be utilized for economic benefit and livelihood and the Sámi philosophy of energy as an inherent life force in creatures, people, and nature. This venue's legacy as a industrial facility is connected to this, as is what the Sámi consider eco-imperialism by regional governments. While attempting to be exemplars for renewable energy, Scandinavian countries have clashed with the Sámi over the building of wind energy projects, river barriers, and digging operations on their traditional territory; the Sámi assert their fundamental freedoms, incomes, and culture are threatened. "It's very difficult being such a small minority to stand your ground when the reasons are rooted in saving the world," Sara comments. "Extractivism has co-opted the language of sustainability, but still it's just aiming to find more suitable ways to persist in habits of use."

Individual Struggles

The artist and her kin have themselves conflicted with the Norwegian government over its increasingly stringent rules on herding. In 2016, Sara's sibling embarked on a series of unsuccessful legal cases over the required reduction of his animals, ostensibly to stop vegetation depletion. To back him, Sara developed a four-year series of artworks titled Pile O'Sápmi featuring a colossal drape of numerous cranial remains, which was shown at the the event Documenta 14 and later purchased by the public gallery, where it is displayed in the lobby.

Art as Activism

For many Sámi, art seems the sole realm in which they can be listened to by outsiders. In 2022, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|