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Guests to Tate Modern are used to unusual displays in its expansive Turbine Hall. They've basked under an artificial sun, descended down helter skelters, and witnessed AI-powered jellyfish floating through the air. Yet this marks the inaugural time they will be engaging themselves in the complex nasal passages of a reindeer. The latest creative installation for this cavernous space—designed by Native Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—welcomes patrons into a maze-like construction based on the expanded interior of a reindeer's nasal cavities. Once inside, they can stroll around or relax on reindeer hides, tuning in on earphones to community leaders imparting stories and wisdom.

Why the Nose?

Why the nose? It could appear quirky, but the exhibit pays tribute to a obscure biological feat: researchers have found that in a fraction of a second, the reindeer's nose can heat the ambient air it inhales by 80 degrees celsius, enabling the creature to thrive in inhospitable Arctic conditions. Enlarging the nose to bigger than a person, Sara explains, "creates a sense of inferiority that you as a human being are not superior over nature." Sara is a former reporter, children's author, and land defender, who comes from a pastoral family in the Norwegian Arctic. "Possibly that creates the potential to shift your perspective or spark some humbleness," she continues.

A Tribute to Traditional Ways

The maze-like design is one of several components in Sara's immersive exhibition showcasing the culture, understanding, and worldview of the Sámi, Europe's only Indigenous people. Partially migratory, the Sámi number approximately 100,000 people distributed across northern Norway, Finland, the Swedish Lapland, and the Kola region (an region they call Sápmi). They've endured oppression, integration policies, and repression of their dialect by all four nations. By focusing on the reindeer, an animal at the center of the Sámi mythology and founding narrative, the installation also spotlights the group's issues relating to the climate crisis, property rights, and imperialism.

Meaning in Materials

Along the extended access ramp, there's a soaring, 26-metre sculpture of skins ensnared by utility lines. It represents a analogy for the political and economic systems restricting the Sámi. Like an electrical tower, part spiritual ascent, this part of the exhibit, named Goavve-, points to the Sámi name for an severe climatic event, whereby solid sheets of ice develop as varying temperatures liquefy and refreeze the snow, trapping the reindeers' key winter food, lichen. This phenomenon is a outcome of climate change, which is occurring up to much more rapidly in the Polar region than elsewhere.

Previously, I met with Sara in the Norwegian far north during a icy season and accompanied Sámi herders on their snowmobiles in biting cold as they transported carts of food pellets on to the exposed frozen landscape to dispense manually. The herd surrounded round us, pawing the icy ground in vain attempts for mossy morsels. This resource-intensive and laborious procedure is having a significant influence on reindeer husbandry—and on the animals' independence. However the alternative is death. As goavvi winters become frequent, reindeer are dying—a number from starvation, others suffocating after falling into water bodies through prematurely melting ice. To some extent, the work is a monument to them. "By overlapping of components, in a way I'm introducing the condition to London," says Sara.

Contrasting Perspectives

This artwork also highlights the stark difference between the western understanding of electricity as a commodity to be utilized for economic benefit and survival and the Sámi outlook of vitality as an natural power in creatures, people, and land. Tate Modern's history as a coal and oil power station is connected to this, as is what the Sámi see as eco-imperialism by Nordic countries. As they strive to be exemplars for clean sources, Scandinavian countries have clashed with the Sámi over the construction of wind energy projects, river barriers, and digging operations on their native soil; the Sámi argue their legal protections, ways of life, and culture are threatened. "It's hard being such a tiny group to protect your rights when the arguments are grounded in saving the world," Sara comments. "Resource exploitation has adopted the language of sustainability, but nonetheless it's just striving to find better ways to maintain habits of expenditure."

Family Conflicts

The artist and her kin have personally disagreed with the Norwegian government over its increasingly stringent regulations on reindeer management. In 2016, Sara's sibling initiated a series of finally failed court actions over the forced culling of his animals, supposedly to stop overgrazing. To back him, Sara developed a multi-year set of creations named Pile O'Sápmi including a huge screen of numerous reindeer skulls, which was exhibited at the 2017's art exhibition Documenta 14 and later purchased by the national institution, where it hangs in the entrance.

Art as Awareness

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