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Guests to Tate Modern are accustomed to unusual encounters in its spacious Turbine Hall. They have relaxed under an man-made sun, glided down helter skelters, and witnessed automated jellyfish drifting through the air. Yet this marks the inaugural time they will be engaging themselves in the complex nose chambers of a reindeer. The current creative installation for this immense space—designed by Native Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—encourages gallerygoers into a winding construction based on the scaled-up inside of a reindeer's nasal airways. Once inside, they can wander around or relax on skins, tuning in on headphones to tribal seniors sharing tales and knowledge.

Why the Nose?

Why choose the nasal structure? It could sound quirky, but the installation pays tribute to a obscure natural marvel: researchers have found that in a fraction of a second, the reindeer's nose can warm the surrounding air it breathes in by eighty degrees, helping the animal to survive in extreme Arctic climates. Enlarging the nose to human-scale dimensions, Sara notes, "generates a feeling of smallness that you as a person are not dominant over nature." She is a former writer, young adult author, and rights advocate, who comes from a pastoral family in northern Norway. "Maybe that fosters the possibility to shift your perspective or spark some humbleness," she continues.

An Homage to Sámi Culture

The maze-like installation is among various elements in Sara's immersive exhibition celebrating the traditions, knowledge, and philosophy of the Sámi, Europe's only Indigenous people. Traditionally mobile, the Sámi total roughly 100,000 people ranged across northern Norway, Finland, the Swedish Lapland, and the Kola region (an territory they call Sápmi). They've endured oppression, integration policies, and repression of their dialect by all four nations. Through highlighting the reindeer, an animal at the core of the Sámi mythology and origin tale, the installation also highlights the group's issues relating to the global warming, property rights, and colonialism.

Symbolism in Components

Along the long entry slope, there's a soaring, 26-meter formation of reindeer hides trapped by electrical wires. It serves as a analogy for the governance and financial structures restricting the Sámi. Part pylon, part heavenly staircase, this component of the exhibit, named Goavve-, relates to the Sámi term for an severe climatic event, wherein thick coatings of ice develop as fluctuating weather melt and ice over the snow, locking in the reindeers' main cold-season sustenance, lichen. The condition is a consequence of climate change, which is taking place up to at an accelerated rate in the Polar region than in other regions.

Previously, I traveled to see Sara in the Norwegian far north during a icy season and accompanied Sámi herders on their motorized sleds in biting cold as they carried carts of animal nutrition on to the wind-scoured Arctic plains to dispense by hand. The reindeer gathered round us, scratching the frozen ground in vain for mossy pieces. This resource-intensive and labour-intensive procedure is having a drastic effect on herding practices—and on the animals' self-sufficiency. However the alternative is malnutrition. As goavvi winters become commonplace, reindeer are perishing—a number from hunger, others drowning after sinking in streams through thinning ice sheets. In a sense, the installation is a monument to them. "With the layering of elements, in a way I'm bringing the phenomenon to London," says Sara.

Contrasting Worldviews

This artwork also highlights the sharp contrast between the modern understanding of energy as a resource to be exploited for profit and livelihood and the Sámi worldview of vitality as an inherent essence in animals, people, and the environment. Tate Modern's legacy as a fossil fuel plant is tied up in this, as is what the Sámi see as environmental exploitation by Scandinavian states. As they strive to be leaders for renewable energy, these states have disagreed with the Sámi over the construction of wind energy projects, water power facilities, and extraction sites on their traditional territory; the Sámi assert their legal protections, incomes, and way of life are endangered. "It's hard being such a small minority to defend yourself when the arguments are based on global sustainability," Sara notes. "Extractivism has adopted the rhetoric of environmentalism, but nonetheless it's just aiming to find more suitable ways to continue patterns of consumption."

Family Struggles

Sara and her kin have themselves disagreed with the national administration over its tightening regulations on animal husbandry. Previously, Sara's brother initiated a series of ultimately unsuccessful court actions over the mandatory slaughter of his herd, apparently to stop excessive feeding. As a show of solidarity, Sara developed a extended collection of pieces called Pile O'Sápmi including a massive drape of 400 animal bones, which was exhibited at the 2017's show Documenta 14 and later obtained by the national institution, where it is displayed in the entryway.

Creative Expression as Awareness

For many Sámi, art is the exclusive sphere in which they can be listened to by outsiders. In 2022, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|