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Attendees to Tate Modern are familiar to surprising displays in its expansive Turbine Hall. They have relaxed under an man-made sun, slid down spiral slides, and observed robotic jellyfish floating through the air. But this marks the initial time they will be immersing themselves in the detailed nasal passages of a reindeer. The latest creative installation for this immense space—created by Native Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—invites gallerygoers into a labyrinthine construction modeled after the expanded inside of a reindeer's nose airways. Once inside, they can wander around or unwind on skins, listening on earphones to tribal seniors imparting stories and wisdom.

Why the Nose?

Why choose the nasal structure? It might appear whimsical, but the artwork honors a obscure natural marvel: researchers have discovered that in a fraction of a second, the reindeer's nose can warm the incoming air it takes in by 80°C, allowing the creature to survive in inhospitable Arctic conditions. Scaling the nose to bigger than a person, Sara notes, "produces a perception of insignificance that you as a individual are not in control over nature." The artist is a ex- journalist, young adult author, and rights advocate, who comes from a herding family in the Norwegian Arctic. "Maybe that fosters the possibility to change your outlook or spark some modesty," she continues.

A Celebration to Sámi Culture

The winding design is among various features in Sara's engaging art project honoring the heritage, knowledge, and beliefs of the Sámi, Europe's only Indigenous people. Partially migratory, the Sámi total approximately 100,000 people spread across northern Norway, Finland, the Swedish Lapland, and the Kola region (an region they call Sápmi). They have faced discrimination, cultural suppression, and suppression of their dialect by all four states. By focusing on the reindeer, an creature at the core of the Sámi cosmology and founding narrative, the work also highlights the group's struggles associated with the environmental emergency, property rights, and external control.

Symbolism in Components

Along the extended entrance slope, there's a looming, 26-meter structure of skins trapped by utility lines. It can be read as a metaphor for the political and economic systems limiting the Sámi. Like an electrical tower, part spiritual ascent, this part of the installation, titled Goavve-, points to the Sámi word for an harsh environmental condition, whereby solid layers of ice appear as changing weather liquefy and refreeze the snow, locking in the reindeers' primary cold-season food, fungus. This phenomenon is a consequence of planetary warming, which is happening up to four times faster in the Polar region than globally.

Previously, I visited Sara in a remote town during a goavvi winter and joined Sámi pastoralists on their Arctic vehicles in freezing temperatures as they transported carts of supplementary feed on to the exposed Arctic plains to distribute manually. The reindeer crowded round us, digging the slippery ground in vain for mossy morsels. This costly and demanding process is having a significant effect on herding practices—and on the animals' self-sufficiency. However the alternative is death. When such conditions become routine, reindeer are dying—a number from hunger, others submerging after plunging into lakes and rivers through thinning ice sheets. In a sense, the work is a monument to them. "With the layering of components, in a way I'm introducing the condition to London," says Sara.

Opposing Worldviews

The sculpture also underscores the clear contrast between the modern understanding of electricity as a commodity to be exploited for gain and livelihood and the Sámi outlook of life force as an natural power in creatures, humans, and the environment. The gallery's history as a fossil fuel plant is connected to this, as is what the Sámi view as eco-imperialism by Nordic countries. While attempting to be standard bearers for sustainable power, Nordic nations have locked horns with the Sámi over the development of turbine fields, river barriers, and digging operations on their ancestral land; the Sámi assert their human rights, ways of life, and traditions are threatened. "It's challenging being such a limited population to stand your ground when the reasons are grounded in global sustainability," Sara comments. "Resource exploitation has appropriated the language of sustainability, but nonetheless it's just aiming to find more suitable ways to continue practices of expenditure."

Individual Struggles

She and her kin have themselves disagreed with the Norwegian government over its tightening regulations on reindeer management. A few years ago, Sara's sibling initiated a series of unsuccessful legal cases over the required reduction of his herd, apparently to stop excessive feeding. To back him, Sara produced a four-year series of pieces named Pile O'Sápmi including a massive curtain of four hundred cranial remains, which was exhibited at the 2017 art exhibition Documenta 14 and later acquired by the National Museum of Oslo, where it hangs in the entryway.

The Role of Art in Activism

Among the community, visual expression appears the only realm in which they can be heard by people of other nations. In 2022, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|