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Visitors to Tate Modern are used to unusual displays in its vast Turbine Hall. They have relaxed under an simulated sun, slid down amusement rides, and witnessed robotic jellyfish floating through the air. However this marks the inaugural time they will be immersing themselves in the intricate nose cavities of a reindeer. The current artistic project for this immense space—designed by Indigenous Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—encourages patrons into a winding structure inspired by the enlarged inside of a reindeer's nose airways. Once inside, they can meander around or chill out on reindeer hides, tuning in on earphones to Sámi elders imparting tales and insights.

Why the Nose?

Why choose the nasal structure? It may seem whimsical, but the installation pays tribute to a rarely recognized natural marvel: experts have discovered that in a fraction of a second, the reindeer's nose can raise the temperature of the surrounding air it inhales by eighty degrees, allowing the creature to survive in extreme Arctic conditions. Expanding the nose to bigger than a person, Sara explains, "generates a sense of insignificance that you as a person are not dominant over nature." She is a ex- journalist, writer for kids, and land defender, who hails from a pastoral family in the Norwegian Arctic. "Possibly that creates the possibility to alter your viewpoint or spark some humility," she states.

An Homage to Traditional Ways

The labyrinthine design is part of a components in Sara's engaging exhibition honoring the traditions, science, and worldview of the Sámi, the continent's original inhabitants. Traditionally mobile, the Sámi number roughly 100,000 people spread across northern Norway, the Finnish Arctic, the Swedish Lapland, and the Kola region (an territory they call Sápmi). They have faced oppression, cultural suppression, and eradication of their language by all four states. By focusing on the reindeer, an creature at the center of the Sámi belief system and founding narrative, the work also draws attention to the community's struggles relating to the climate crisis, land dispossession, and colonialism.

Meaning in Elements

On the long entry slope, there's a looming, 26-metre structure of reindeer hides entangled by electrical wires. It serves as a symbol for the political and economic systems limiting the Sámi. Partly a utility pole, part celestial ladder, this part of the exhibit, named Goavve-, refers to the Sámi name for an harsh environmental condition, whereby thick coatings of ice form as varying weather thaw and solidify again the snow, locking in the reindeers' primary cold-season nourishment, lichen. This phenomenon is a outcome of planetary warming, which is happening up to at an accelerated rate in the Far North than globally.

Previously, I traveled to see Sara in the Norwegian far north during a severe cold period and joined Sámi herders on their snowmobiles in chilly conditions as they hauled trailers of supplementary feed on to the barren frozen landscape to dispense by hand. The reindeer surrounded round us, digging the frozen ground in vain for lichen-covered pieces. This expensive and demanding process is having a severe influence on herding practices—and on the animals' self-sufficiency. Yet the alternative is starvation. When such conditions become commonplace, reindeer are succumbing—a number from lack of food, others submerging after plunging into streams through thinning ice sheets. On one level, the art is a monument to them. "Through the stacking of elements, in a way I'm introducing the phenomenon to London," says Sara.

Contrasting Perspectives

The sculpture also emphasizes the sharp difference between the industrial view of energy as a resource to be exploited for gain and survival and the Sámi philosophy of life force as an inherent life force in creatures, humans, and the environment. Tate Modern's legacy as a industrial facility is tied up in this, as is what the Sámi consider eco-imperialism by Nordic countries. In their efforts to be exemplars for clean sources, Nordic nations have disagreed with the Sámi over the construction of turbine fields, water power facilities, and digging operations on their traditional territory; the Sámi assert their human rights, ways of life, and way of life are threatened. "It's challenging being such a small minority to protect your rights when the arguments are based on saving the world," Sara observes. "Resource exploitation has co-opted the rhetoric of ecology, but yet it's just striving to find more suitable ways to maintain patterns of consumption."

Personal Conflicts

She and her kin have themselves disagreed with the state authorities over its increasingly stringent rules on reindeer management. A few years ago, Sara's sibling undertook a set of unsuccessful court actions over the mandatory slaughter of his livestock, ostensibly to stop vegetation depletion. As a show of solidarity, Sara developed a multi-year collection of artworks titled Pile O'Sápmi featuring a huge curtain of 400 reindeer skulls, which was displayed at the 2017's art exhibition Documenta 14 and later obtained by the National Museum of Oslo, where it is displayed in the entryway.

Art as Advocacy

For numerous Indigenous people, visual expression appears the exclusive domain in which they can be listened to by outsiders. In 2022, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|