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Guests to Tate Modern are accustomed to surprising encounters in its spacious Turbine Hall. They have sunbathed under an artificial sun, glided down helter skelters, and observed robotic jellyfish hovering through the air. Yet this marks the first time they will be immersing themselves in the intricate nasal chambers of a reindeer. The current artistic project for this immense space—designed by Indigenous Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—welcomes patrons into a maze-like structure modeled after the scaled-up interior of a reindeer's nose cavities. Inside, they can meander around or unwind on reindeer hides, tuning in on earphones to community leaders telling narratives and knowledge.

Focus on the Nasal Passages

Why choose the nasal structure? It might appear playful, but the artwork pays tribute to a rarely recognized scientific wonder: experts have uncovered that in under a second, the reindeer's nose can heat the incoming air it inhales by 80 degrees celsius, helping the animal to survive in harsh Arctic temperatures. Expanding the nose to bigger than a person, Sara says, "generates a feeling of insignificance that you as a individual are not in control over nature." She is a former writer, children's author, and rights advocate, who comes from a reindeer-herding family in the Norwegian Arctic. "Maybe that generates the potential to alter your viewpoint or spark some modesty," she continues.

An Homage to Sámi Culture

The maze-like structure is one of several components in Sara's immersive commission celebrating the culture, understanding, and beliefs of the Sámi, the continent's original inhabitants. Semi-nomadic, the Sámi number about 100,000 people ranged across northern Norway, the Finnish Arctic, the Swedish Lapland, and the Russian Arctic (an area they call Sápmi). They have faced persecution, cultural suppression, and eradication of their tongue by all four states. Through highlighting the reindeer, an animal at the center of the Sámi belief system and creation story, the work also draws attention to the community's issues relating to the climate crisis, land dispossession, and external control.

Symbolism in Materials

On the lengthy entry incline, there's a soaring, 26-metre structure of pelts ensnared by electrical wires. It can be read as a symbol for the governance and financial structures restricting the Sámi. Partly a utility pole, part celestial ladder, this component of the installation, named Goavve-, points to the Sámi name for an severe climatic event, wherein thick sheets of ice develop as changing weather liquefy and ice over the snow, trapping the reindeers' primary winter food, moss. The condition is a outcome of planetary warming, which is occurring up to at an accelerated rate in the Polar region than globally.

A few years back, I traveled to see Sara in the Norwegian far north during a goavvi winter and went with Sámi herders on their snowmobiles in chilly conditions as they transported containers of animal nutrition on to the wind-scoured tundra to distribute by hand. The herd surrounded round us, pawing the frozen ground in vain for vegetative morsels. This resource-intensive and labour-intensive process is having a drastic effect on reindeer husbandry—and on the animals' self-sufficiency. Yet the other option is death. As goavvi winters become frequent, reindeer are dying—some from hunger, others submerging after falling into streams through unstable frozen surfaces. In a sense, the work is a monument to them. "By overlapping of materials, in a way I'm introducing the phenomenon to London," says Sara.

Diverging Worldviews

The installation also emphasizes the clear difference between the western view of energy as a asset to be harnessed for economic benefit and existence and the Sámi outlook of life force as an inherent essence in creatures, humans, and the environment. The gallery's history as a fossil fuel plant is tied up in this, as is what the Sámi see as green colonialism by Nordic countries. As they strive to be standard bearers for renewable energy, Nordic nations have locked horns with the Sámi over the development of windfarms, river barriers, and mines on their ancestral land; the Sámi assert their fundamental freedoms, ways of life, and traditions are endangered. "It's challenging being such a tiny group to stand your ground when the justifications are based on global sustainability," Sara comments. "Resource exploitation has adopted the discourse of sustainability, but yet it's just aiming to find alternative ways to maintain patterns of consumption."

Individual Challenges

Sara and her kin have themselves clashed with the Norwegian government over its ever-stricter rules on herding. Previously, Sara's sibling undertook a set of ultimately unsuccessful lawsuits over the required reduction of his herd, ostensibly to stop overgrazing. As a show of solidarity, Sara produced a extended collection of creations titled Pile O'Sápmi including a huge screen of 400 cranial remains, which was exhibited at the 2017's event Documenta 14 and later purchased by the national institution, where it hangs in the lobby.

The Role of Art in Advocacy

Among the community, visual expression seems the sole domain in which they can be listened to by outsiders. In 2022, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|