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Visitors to Tate Modern are accustomed to unusual encounters in its spacious Turbine Hall. They have sunbathed under an man-made sun, descended down helter skelters, and seen AI-powered jellyfish drifting through the air. However this marks the initial time they will be immersing themselves in the complex nasal passages of a reindeer. The newest creative installation for this cavernous space—designed by Indigenous Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—invites patrons into a winding construction modeled after the enlarged inside of a reindeer's nose airways. Inside, they can stroll around or chill out on reindeer hides, tuning in on headphones to tribal seniors sharing stories and knowledge.

The Significance of the Nose

Why choose the nasal structure? It may appear whimsical, but the exhibit celebrates a little-known scientific wonder: researchers have found that in less than one second, the reindeer's nose can warm the ambient air it inhales by 80°C, helping the animal to thrive in extreme Arctic temperatures. Expanding the nose to human-scale dimensions, Sara explains, "creates a feeling of inferiority that you as a human being are not dominant over nature." She is a former writer, young adult author, and land defender, who is from a pastoral family in northern Norway. "Perhaps that creates the potential to shift your outlook or evoke some modesty," she continues.

A Celebration to Indigenous Heritage

The maze-like structure is one of several components in Sara's engaging commission celebrating the culture, science, and worldview of the Sámi, the continent's original inhabitants. Semi-nomadic, the Sámi total roughly 100,000 people spread across northern Norway, Finland, the Swedish Lapland, and Russia's Kola Peninsula (an territory they call Sápmi). They've endured persecution, cultural suppression, and repression of their language by all four countries. Through highlighting the reindeer, an animal at the core of the Sámi mythology and founding narrative, the art also highlights the community's struggles relating to the climate crisis, property rights, and external control.

Symbolism in Components

On the long entrance ramp, there's a soaring, eighty-five-foot formation of skins ensnared 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 part of the installation, titled Goavve-, refers to the Sámi name for an severe climatic event, wherein solid sheets of ice form as fluctuating weather liquefy and solidify again the snow, trapping the reindeers' key winter food, lichen. The condition is a consequence of climate change, which is occurring up to much more rapidly in the Far North than elsewhere.

Previously, I visited Sara in a remote town during a goavvi winter and went with Sámi herders on their snowmobiles in chilly conditions as they transported trailers of animal nutrition on to the barren tundra to distribute manually. These animals crowded round us, scratching the slippery ground in vain attempts for mossy bits. This expensive and labour-intensive procedure is having a drastic impact on reindeer husbandry—and on the animals' self-sufficiency. But the choice is death. As these icy periods become frequent, reindeer are succumbing—a number from starvation, others suffocating after falling into lakes and rivers through prematurely melting ice. To some extent, the work is a tribute to them. "By overlapping of materials, in a way I'm bringing the goavvi to London," says Sara.

Contrasting Belief Systems

This artwork also highlights the sharp contrast between the industrial understanding of power as a commodity to be harnessed for profit and livelihood and the Sámi philosophy of life force as an innate power in animals, individuals, and the environment. Tate Modern's history as a fossil fuel plant is tied up in this, as is what the Sámi view as environmental exploitation by Nordic countries. While attempting to be leaders for renewable energy, Scandinavian countries have locked horns with the Sámi over the building of windfarms, hydroelectric dams, and extraction sites on their native soil; the Sámi argue their human rights, incomes, and traditions are endangered. "It's challenging being such a small minority to defend yourself when the reasons are based on environmental protection," Sara observes. "Extractivism has adopted the language of sustainability, but nonetheless it's just striving to find better ways to persist in practices of use."

Family Struggles

Sara and her family have themselves disagreed with the national administration over its tightening policies on herding. A few years ago, Sara's sibling embarked on a set of ultimately unsuccessful legal cases over the mandatory slaughter of his herd, apparently to stop vegetation depletion. To back him, Sara developed a four-year series of artworks called Pile O'Sápmi comprising a huge drape of four hundred cranial remains, which was displayed at the 2017's show Documenta 14 and later purchased by the national institution, where it is displayed in the entryway.

Art as Activism

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