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Visitors to Tate Modern are accustomed to surprising displays in its vast Turbine Hall. They've relaxed under an artificial sun, descended down amusement rides, and seen robotic sea creatures drifting through the air. However this marks the initial time they will be immersing themselves in the intricate nasal cavities of a reindeer. The newest artistic project for this huge space—developed by Indigenous Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—invites visitors into a winding construction modeled after the scaled-up interior of a reindeer's nose cavities. Upon entering, they can wander around or relax on reindeer hides, tuning in on earphones to community leaders sharing stories and knowledge.

Focus on the Nasal Passages

Why choose the nasal structure? It could sound whimsical, but the artwork celebrates a rarely recognized natural marvel: researchers have discovered that in under a second, the reindeer's nose can warm the surrounding air it breathes in by eighty degrees, helping the creature to endure in harsh Arctic conditions. Expanding the nose to bigger than a person, Sara explains, "generates a sense of smallness that you as a human being are not dominant over nature." She is a former writer, children's author, and land defender, who comes from a pastoral family in the far north of Norway. "Perhaps that creates the possibility to change your perspective or trigger some humbleness," she adds.

An Homage to Sámi Culture

The maze-like structure is among various features in Sara's immersive commission celebrating the traditions, knowledge, and beliefs of the Sámi, the sole native group in Europe. Semi-nomadic, the Sámi number roughly 100,000 people spread across the Norwegian north, Finland, the Swedish Lapland, and Russia's Kola Peninsula (an territory they call Sápmi). They have endured oppression, cultural suppression, 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 draws attention to the group's issues relating to the environmental emergency, loss of territory, and external control.

Meaning in Materials

On the long access ramp, there's a looming, eighty-five-foot sculpture of skins ensnared by electrical wires. It serves as a symbol for the governance and financial structures constraining the Sámi. Part pylon, part heavenly staircase, this section of the exhibit, titled Goavve-, refers to the Sámi name for an extreme weather phenomenon, in which dense coatings of ice develop as fluctuating weather liquefy and refreeze the snow, encasing the reindeers' primary cold-season sustenance, lichen. Goavvi is a consequence of planetary warming, which is happening up to much more rapidly in the Arctic than elsewhere.

Previously, I met with Sara in Guovdageaidnu during a goavvi winter and accompanied Sámi reindeer keepers on their Arctic vehicles in chilly conditions as they hauled carts of food pellets on to the barren tundra to dispense manually. These animals gathered round us, pawing the frozen ground in vain attempts for lichen-covered morsels. This resource-intensive and labour-intensive method is having a severe impact on animal rearing—and on the animals' independence. Yet the other option is starvation. As these icy periods become routine, reindeer are succumbing—some from lack of food, others submerging after sinking in lakes and rivers through prematurely melting ice. To some extent, the installation is a tribute to them. "By overlapping of components, in a way I'm introducing the phenomenon to London," says Sara.

Diverging Belief Systems

The sculpture also underscores the sharp contrast between the western view of energy as a commodity to be harnessed for profit and livelihood and the Sámi philosophy of vitality as an innate life force in creatures, individuals, and the environment. The gallery's past as a fossil fuel plant is tied up in this, as is what the Sámi view as eco-imperialism by Scandinavian states. As they strive to be standard bearers for renewable energy, Nordic nations have disagreed with the Sámi over the development of wind energy projects, river barriers, and mines on their ancestral land; the Sámi contend their fundamental freedoms, ways of life, and way of life are at risk. "It's hard being such a small minority to stand your ground when the arguments are rooted in environmental protection," Sara observes. "Mining practices has co-opted the language of ecology, but still it's just attempting to find better ways to maintain habits of use."

Personal Challenges

The artist and her relatives have themselves conflicted with the state authorities over its increasingly stringent regulations on reindeer management. In 2016, Sara's brother embarked on a series of finally failed legal cases over the mandatory slaughter of his livestock, apparently to stop vegetation depletion. In support, Sara developed a extended collection of artworks called Pile O'Sápmi featuring a huge screen of four hundred animal bones, which was displayed at the 2017's show Documenta 14 and later obtained by the public gallery, where it is displayed in the entrance.

Art as Awareness

For many Sámi, creative work seems the sole realm in which they can be heard by people of other nations. In 2022, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|