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Guests to Tate Modern are accustomed to unusual displays in its expansive Turbine Hall. They have sunbathed under an artificial sun, slid down helter skelters, and seen AI-powered sea creatures hovering through the air. However this marks the inaugural time they will be immersing themselves in the intricate nasal passages of a reindeer. The newest creative installation for this immense space—developed by Native Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—encourages patrons into a labyrinthine construction based on the scaled-up inside of a reindeer's nasal passages. Once inside, they can meander around or chill out on reindeer hides, listening on headphones to tribal seniors telling narratives and insights.

Why the Nose?

What's the focus on the nose? It might sound quirky, but the exhibit celebrates a little-known biological feat: scientists have found that in under a second, the reindeer's nose can warm the surrounding air it breathes in by 80°C, enabling the animal to endure in inhospitable Arctic conditions. Expanding the nose to larger than human size, Sara says, "produces a perception of smallness that you as a human being are not dominant over nature." The artist is a former journalist, children's author, and environmental activist, who comes from a herding family in the far north of Norway. "Maybe that generates the potential to alter your viewpoint or spark some humbleness," she adds.

An Homage to Traditional Ways

The maze-like design is among various components in Sara's engaging commission showcasing the traditions, science, and beliefs of the Sámi, the continent's original inhabitants. Traditionally mobile, the Sámi total approximately 100,000 people ranged across northern Norway, Finland, the Swedish Lapland, and the Russian Arctic (an area they call Sápmi). They've faced oppression, integration policies, and eradication of their dialect by all four countries. Through highlighting the reindeer, an creature at the core of the Sámi belief system and founding narrative, the art also draws attention to the people's challenges connected to the environmental emergency, loss of territory, and colonialism.

Symbolism in Materials

Along the lengthy access incline, there's a looming, eighty-five-foot formation of reindeer hides entangled by electrical wires. It serves as a symbol for the political and economic systems constraining the Sámi. Partly a utility pole, part spiritual ascent, this section of the installation, titled Goavve-, points to the Sámi term for an extreme weather phenomenon, wherein thick layers of ice appear as fluctuating temperatures thaw and refreeze the snow, encasing the reindeers' key winter sustenance, lichen. Goavvi is a outcome of climate change, which is happening up to at an accelerated rate in the Arctic than in other regions.

Previously, I visited Sara in a remote town during a severe cold period and went with Sámi pastoralists on their Arctic vehicles in biting cold as they transported containers of food pellets on to the barren Arctic plains to provide through labor. These animals gathered round us, scratching the slippery ground in vain attempts for mossy morsels. This expensive and demanding method is having a severe impact on herding practices—and on the animals' self-sufficiency. However the alternative is starvation. When such conditions become frequent, reindeer are dying—a number from hunger, others suffocating after falling into lakes and rivers through unstable frozen surfaces. In a sense, the installation is a memorial to them. "By overlapping of elements, in a way I'm introducing the phenomenon to London," says Sara.

Diverging Belief Systems

The sculpture also underscores the stark contrast between the industrial interpretation of energy as a asset to be harnessed for profit and livelihood and the Sámi worldview of energy as an natural essence in creatures, humans, and the environment. The gallery's history as a fossil fuel plant is linked with this, as is what the Sámi consider eco-imperialism by Scandinavian states. As they strive to be leaders for sustainable power, Nordic nations have clashed with the Sámi over the construction of turbine fields, river barriers, and mines on their native soil; the Sámi assert their fundamental freedoms, livelihoods, and culture are endangered. "It's hard being such a small minority to stand your ground when the reasons are grounded in saving the world," Sara comments. "Extractivism has appropriated the rhetoric of ecology, but still it's just aiming to find alternative ways to maintain patterns of use."

Individual Conflicts

The artist and her kin have themselves clashed with the state authorities over its increasingly stringent regulations on herding. A few years ago, Sara's brother undertook a set of finally failed court actions over the required reduction of his livestock, ostensibly to stop excessive feeding. As a show of solidarity, Sara developed a extended collection of creations titled Pile O'Sápmi including a colossal screen of 400 animal bones, which was displayed at the the event Documenta 14 and later acquired by the national institution, where it hangs in the entryway.

Art as Awareness

For numerous Indigenous people, creative work is the sole sphere in which they can be listened to by the global community. In 2022, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|