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Visitors to Tate Modern are accustomed to unexpected displays in its expansive Turbine Hall. They have basked under an artificial sun, slid down helter skelters, and seen AI-powered jellyfish drifting through the air. Yet this marks the inaugural time they will be venturing themselves in the detailed nasal chambers of a reindeer. The current artistic project for this huge space—created by Indigenous Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—invites patrons into a winding construction based on the expanded interior of a reindeer's nose airways. Inside, they can wander around or unwind on skins, tuning in on earphones to Sámi elders imparting stories and knowledge.

Why the Nose?

What's the focus on the nose? It could seem whimsical, but the installation honors a rarely recognized natural marvel: researchers have uncovered that in less than one second, the reindeer's nose can raise the temperature of the incoming air it breathes in by eighty degrees, enabling the animal to survive in harsh Arctic climates. Expanding the nose to larger than human size, Sara says, "generates a sense of inferiority that you as a human being are not dominant over nature." Sara is a former reporter, children's author, and rights advocate, who comes from a pastoral family in the Norwegian Arctic. "Maybe that fosters the possibility to change your perspective or evoke some modesty," she states.

A Tribute to Indigenous Heritage

The labyrinthine design is part of a components in Sara's absorbing art project celebrating the culture, science, and worldview of the Sámi, the continent's original inhabitants. Semi-nomadic, the Sámi total about 100,000 people ranged across northern Norway, Finland, the Swedish Lapland, and the Kola region (an territory they call Sápmi). They have endured discrimination, integration policies, and eradication of their tongue by all four countries. Through highlighting the reindeer, an animal at the heart of the Sámi mythology and creation story, the work also spotlights the group's struggles relating to the environmental emergency, property rights, and colonialism.

Meaning in Materials

At the extended access ramp, there's a looming, 26-metre sculpture of reindeer hides entangled by utility lines. It represents a metaphor for the political and economic systems constraining the Sámi. Partly a utility pole, part celestial ladder, this section of the artwork, titled Goavve-, refers to the Sámi name for an harsh environmental condition, in which thick sheets of ice appear as changing weather thaw and solidify again the snow, encasing the reindeers' main cold-season food, fungus. This phenomenon is a result of planetary warming, which is taking place up to four times faster in the Far North than in other regions.

A few years back, I visited Sara in a remote town during a icy season and accompanied Sámi pastoralists on their Arctic vehicles in biting cold as they hauled carts of food pellets on to the barren tundra to distribute manually. The herd surrounded round us, pawing the slippery ground in vain attempts for mossy bits. This costly and laborious process is having a severe effect on herding practices—and on the animals' independence. But the other option is starvation. As these icy periods become routine, reindeer are succumbing—a number from lack of food, others submerging after sinking in lakes and rivers through thinning ice sheets. To some extent, the work is a tribute to them. "With the layering of elements, in a way I'm transporting the goavvi to London," says Sara.

Diverging Perspectives

The sculpture also underscores the clear divergence between the modern interpretation of electricity as a asset to be exploited for profit and survival and the Sámi worldview of energy as an innate essence in animals, individuals, and land. This venue's legacy as a industrial facility is linked with this, as is what the Sámi consider green colonialism by Nordic countries. As they strive to be leaders for sustainable power, these states have locked horns with the Sámi over the construction of turbine fields, river barriers, and digging operations 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 defend yourself when the arguments are rooted in saving the world," Sara comments. "Resource exploitation has appropriated the language of environmentalism, but yet it's just aiming to find alternative ways to persist in patterns of use."

Personal Challenges

The artist and her kin have personally conflicted with the Norwegian government over its tightening regulations on animal husbandry. Previously, Sara's brother embarked on a series of finally failed court actions over the required reduction of his animals, ostensibly to stop vegetation depletion. In support, Sara produced a multi-year set of pieces titled Pile O'Sápmi including a huge curtain of four hundred animal bones, which was exhibited at the the show Documenta 14 and later acquired by the National Museum of Oslo, where it hangs in the entrance.

Art as Advocacy

For numerous Indigenous people, art appears the sole realm in which they can be heard by outsiders. In 2022, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|