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Attendees to Tate Modern are accustomed to unusual displays in its spacious Turbine Hall. They've relaxed under an artificial sun, glided down helter skelters, and seen automated jellyfish hovering through the air. However this marks the first time they will be immersing themselves in the intricate nose chambers of a reindeer. The latest artist commission for this immense space—created by Indigenous Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—invites gallerygoers into a labyrinthine construction inspired by the enlarged inside of a reindeer's nasal passages. Upon entering, they can wander around or relax on pelts, listening on headphones to Sámi elders telling tales and knowledge.

Focus on the Nasal Passages

What's the focus on the nose? It may sound playful, but the exhibit celebrates a little-known natural marvel: scientists have uncovered that in a fraction of a second, the reindeer's nose can raise the temperature of the surrounding air it takes in by 80°C, enabling the creature to endure in harsh Arctic climates. Scaling the nose to human-scale dimensions, Sara explains, "creates a perception of inferiority that you as a human being are not dominant over nature." Sara is a ex- writer, writer for kids, and rights advocate, who is from a reindeer-herding family in the Norwegian Arctic. "Perhaps that generates the potential to alter your outlook or evoke some modesty," she states.

A Tribute to Traditional Ways

The winding structure is among various components in Sara's absorbing art project celebrating the culture, understanding, and beliefs of the Sámi, the sole native group in Europe. Traditionally mobile, the Sámi count about 100,000 people spread across the Norwegian north, Finland, the Swedish Lapland, and Russia's Kola Peninsula (an area they call Sápmi). They have experienced discrimination, cultural suppression, and eradication of their tongue by all four countries. With an emphasis on the reindeer, an animal at the center of the Sámi belief system and creation story, the art also draws attention to the community's struggles connected to the climate crisis, land dispossession, and external control.

Meaning in Components

At the long access slope, there's a soaring, 26-meter sculpture of pelts entangled by electrical wires. It represents a metaphor for the political and economic systems limiting the Sámi. Part pylon, part heavenly staircase, this part of the artwork, called Goavve-, relates to the Sámi term for an severe climatic event, wherein thick sheets of ice form as fluctuating temperatures melt and solidify again the snow, trapping the reindeers' primary winter nourishment, moss. This phenomenon is a consequence of climate change, which is occurring up to four times faster in the Far North than globally.

Previously, I met with Sara in a remote town during a goavvi winter and joined Sámi pastoralists on their motorized sleds in biting cold as they hauled trailers of animal nutrition on to the barren frozen landscape to provide by hand. These animals gathered round us, scratching the slippery ground in vain attempts for lichen-covered bits. This costly and laborious method is having a severe effect on animal rearing—and on the animals' natural survival. Yet the other option is malnutrition. As these icy periods become frequent, reindeer are dying—some from starvation, others suffocating after plunging into streams through prematurely melting ice. To some extent, the art is a monument to them. "By overlapping of components, in a way I'm transporting the goavvi to London," says Sara.

Diverging Belief Systems

The installation also emphasizes the clear divergence between the industrial interpretation of energy as a commodity to be exploited for economic benefit and survival and the Sámi outlook of energy as an inherent essence in creatures, humans, and the environment. Tate Modern's legacy as a coal and oil power station is tied up in this, as is what the Sámi see as eco-imperialism by Nordic countries. As they strive to be exemplars for sustainable power, Scandinavian countries have disagreed with the Sámi over the development of turbine fields, hydroelectric dams, and mines on their native soil; the Sámi assert their legal protections, incomes, and way of life are at risk. "It's very difficult being such a tiny group to stand your ground when the reasons are based on global sustainability," Sara observes. "Mining practices has adopted the rhetoric of environmentalism, but still it's just attempting to find alternative ways to persist in practices of consumption."

Individual Challenges

Sara and her relatives have themselves disagreed with the state authorities over its tightening rules on reindeer management. Previously, Sara's brother undertook a series of finally failed legal cases over the forced culling of his livestock, supposedly to stop overgrazing. In support, Sara created a multi-year series of artworks called Pile O'Sápmi comprising a massive curtain of four hundred animal bones, which was displayed at the 2017's event Documenta 14 and later acquired by the public gallery, where it hangs in the entrance.

Creative Expression as Awareness

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