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Visitors to Tate Modern are used to surprising encounters in its spacious Turbine Hall. They've relaxed under an artificial sun, glided down amusement rides, and observed AI-powered sea creatures floating through the air. However this marks the initial time they will be venturing themselves in the detailed nose cavities of a reindeer. The newest creative installation for this immense space—developed by Native Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—encourages visitors into a labyrinthine design inspired by the scaled-up interior of a reindeer's nasal cavities. Inside, they can stroll around or relax on pelts, tuning in on headphones to community leaders imparting stories and knowledge.

The Significance of the Nose

Why the nose? It may sound playful, but the artwork celebrates a rarely recognized scientific wonder: experts have uncovered that in a fraction of a second, the reindeer's nose can heat the incoming air it inhales by eighty degrees, enabling the creature to thrive in inhospitable Arctic temperatures. Enlarging the nose to human-scale dimensions, Sara notes, "creates a perception of smallness that you as a human being are not superior over nature." She is a ex- reporter, children's author, and environmental activist, who is from a herding family in the Norwegian Arctic. "Perhaps that generates the potential to shift your perspective or trigger some humility," she states.

An Homage to Sámi Culture

The maze-like design is among various elements in Sara's immersive art project celebrating the culture, understanding, and beliefs of the Sámi, the continent's original inhabitants. Semi-nomadic, the Sámi total roughly 100,000 people distributed across the Norwegian north, the Finnish Arctic, Sweden, and the Russian Arctic (an region they call Sápmi). They've faced oppression, integration policies, and suppression of their tongue by all four nations. With an emphasis on the reindeer, an animal at the heart of the Sámi belief system and origin tale, the art also spotlights the people's struggles associated with the environmental emergency, loss of territory, and colonialism.

Metaphor in Elements

On the extended access incline, there's a soaring, 26-metre sculpture of skins trapped by utility lines. It serves as a analogy for the societal frameworks constraining the Sámi. Partly a utility pole, part celestial ladder, this part of the exhibit, titled Goavve-, points to the Sámi term for an severe climatic event, wherein solid layers of ice appear as varying temperatures liquefy and refreeze the snow, trapping the reindeers' main cold-season food, fungus. This phenomenon is a outcome of climate change, which is happening up to much more rapidly in the Far North than in other regions.

Previously, I met with Sara in Guovdageaidnu during a goavvi winter and joined Sámi pastoralists on their snowmobiles in freezing temperatures as they hauled trailers of food pellets on to the barren Arctic plains to distribute manually. The herd surrounded round us, scratching the icy ground in futility for vegetative morsels. This expensive and demanding method is having a severe impact on herding practices—and on the animals' natural survival. But the other option is death. As these icy periods become routine, reindeer are perishing—some from hunger, others submerging after sinking in streams through prematurely melting ice. To some extent, the work is a memorial to them. "With the layering of components, in a way I'm introducing the condition to London," says Sara.

Contrasting Worldviews

This artwork also underscores the stark difference between the western interpretation of electricity as a commodity to be harnessed for economic benefit and survival and the Sámi philosophy of energy as an innate essence in animals, individuals, and the environment. Tate Modern's past as a fossil fuel plant is tied up in this, as is what the Sámi view as eco-imperialism by regional governments. In their efforts to be leaders for clean sources, Scandinavian countries have locked horns with the Sámi over the construction of windfarms, water power facilities, and extraction sites on their traditional territory; the Sámi argue their fundamental freedoms, ways of life, and culture are threatened. "It's hard being such a tiny group to protect your rights when the justifications are rooted in global sustainability," Sara observes. "Resource exploitation has adopted the rhetoric of sustainability, but nonetheless it's just aiming to find alternative ways to persist in patterns of expenditure."

Family Conflicts

The artist and her kin have personally conflicted with the state authorities over its tightening policies on herding. In 2016, Sara's brother undertook a series of unsuccessful legal cases over the required reduction of his animals, supposedly to stop overgrazing. To back him, Sara produced a four-year set of artworks called Pile O'Sápmi including a colossal drape of four hundred reindeer skulls, which was shown at the the art exhibition Documenta 14 and later purchased by the National Museum of Oslo, where it hangs in the entryway.

Creative Expression as Activism

For many Sámi, visual expression appears the exclusive realm in which they can be understood by the global community. In 2022, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|