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Visitors to Tate Modern are accustomed to surprising experiences in its spacious Turbine Hall. They've relaxed under an artificial sun, glided down spiral slides, and observed robotic sea creatures hovering through the air. Yet this marks the inaugural time they will be engaging themselves in the complex nose cavities of a reindeer. The latest artist commission for this cavernous space—created by Indigenous Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—invites patrons into a labyrinthine construction based on the scaled-up interior of a reindeer's nose airways. Once inside, they can stroll around or chill out on skins, tuning in on headphones to tribal seniors sharing narratives and wisdom.

The Significance of the Nose

Why choose the nasal structure? It could seem playful, but the installation pays tribute to a obscure natural marvel: experts have found that in a fraction of a second, the reindeer's nose can heat the surrounding air it takes in by eighty degrees, allowing the creature to thrive in harsh Arctic conditions. Expanding the nose to human-scale dimensions, Sara says, "generates a feeling of inferiority that you as a human being are not in control over nature." The artist is a former reporter, children's author, and environmental activist, who comes from a reindeer-herding family in the Norwegian Arctic. "Maybe that generates the potential to alter your outlook or evoke some humbleness," she states.

A Celebration to Indigenous Heritage

The maze-like installation is one of several components in Sara's absorbing exhibition honoring the traditions, understanding, and beliefs of the Sámi, the continent's original inhabitants. Partially migratory, the Sámi count roughly 100,000 people spread across northern Norway, 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 nations. With an emphasis on the reindeer, an creature at the heart of the Sámi mythology and origin tale, the art also spotlights the people's issues associated with the climate crisis, loss of territory, and imperialism.

Meaning in Materials

Along the extended entrance ramp, there's a soaring, 26-meter sculpture of skins trapped by power and light cables. It represents a metaphor for the political and economic systems restricting the Sámi. Like an electrical tower, part spiritual ascent, this component of the artwork, titled Goavve-, points to the Sámi term for an extreme weather phenomenon, in which dense sheets of ice appear as varying weather liquefy and solidify again the snow, trapping the reindeers' key winter food, fungus. The condition is a result of global heating, which is occurring up to at an accelerated rate in the Polar region than elsewhere.

Previously, I met with Sara in Guovdageaidnu during a severe cold period and went with Sámi reindeer keepers on their motorized sleds in chilly conditions as they transported containers of food pellets on to the exposed Arctic plains to provide manually. The reindeer gathered round us, digging the frozen ground in futility for mossy bits. This resource-intensive and demanding procedure is having a significant impact on herding practices—and on the animals' natural survival. Yet the other option is starvation. When such conditions become routine, reindeer are dying—some from starvation, others submerging after plunging into water bodies through prematurely melting ice. To some extent, the art is a memorial to them. "Through the stacking of materials, in a way I'm transporting the goavvi to London," says Sara.

Opposing Worldviews

The sculpture also emphasizes the clear contrast between the western view of energy as a resource to be exploited for economic benefit and survival and the Sámi philosophy of vitality as an inherent essence in creatures, humans, and the environment. Tate Modern's history as a fossil fuel plant is connected to this, as is what the Sámi view as environmental exploitation by Nordic countries. In their efforts to be standard bearers for clean sources, Scandinavian countries have disagreed with the Sámi over the building of turbine fields, river barriers, and extraction sites on their traditional territory; the Sámi assert their fundamental freedoms, incomes, and way of life are endangered. "It's very difficult being such a small minority to protect your rights when the reasons are grounded in global sustainability," Sara observes. "Resource exploitation has co-opted the discourse of environmentalism, but still it's just attempting to find more suitable ways to persist in habits of consumption."

Personal Conflicts

Sara and her kin have themselves clashed with the state authorities over its tightening rules on herding. A few years ago, Sara's brother embarked on a series of finally failed court actions over the required reduction of his animals, ostensibly to stop excessive feeding. As a show of solidarity, Sara produced a four-year series of artworks titled Pile O'Sápmi including a huge drape of numerous animal bones, which was displayed at the 2017's art exhibition Documenta 14 and later acquired by the national institution, where it resides in the entrance.

Creative Expression as Advocacy

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