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Attendees to Tate Modern are accustomed to unexpected displays in its vast Turbine Hall. They've basked under an man-made sun, slid down spiral slides, and seen AI-powered sea creatures floating through the air. But this marks the inaugural time they will be immersing themselves in the complex nose passages of a reindeer. The latest artist commission for this immense space—designed by Indigenous Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—invites visitors into a labyrinthine structure modeled after the enlarged inside of a reindeer's nose cavities. Upon entering, they can wander around or relax on reindeer hides, listening on earphones to Sámi elders sharing tales and wisdom.

Why the Nose?

Why the nose? It may sound playful, but the installation celebrates a little-known natural marvel: experts have discovered that in a fraction of a second, the reindeer's nose can heat the incoming air it inhales by eighty degrees, helping the creature to thrive in extreme Arctic temperatures. Scaling the nose to larger than human size, Sara says, "creates a sense of insignificance that you as a human being are not dominant over nature." Sara is a ex- reporter, young adult author, and rights advocate, who is from a pastoral family in northern Norway. "Possibly that fosters the possibility to shift your perspective or trigger some modesty," she continues.

An Homage to Traditional Ways

The winding design is part of a elements in Sara's immersive commission honoring the culture, knowledge, and philosophy of the Sámi, Europe's only Indigenous people. Traditionally mobile, the Sámi total roughly 100,000 people spread across northern Norway, the Finnish Arctic, Sweden, and the Kola region (an territory they call Sápmi). They have endured persecution, forced assimilation, and suppression of their tongue by all four states. By focusing on the reindeer, an creature at the core of the Sámi mythology and origin tale, the art also draws attention to the group's issues relating to the global warming, loss of territory, and external control.

Meaning in Components

At the lengthy access incline, there's a towering, eighty-five-foot sculpture of skins ensnared by utility lines. It serves as a metaphor for the political and economic systems restricting the Sámi. Like an electrical tower, part celestial ladder, this part of the installation, titled Goavve-, relates to the Sámi term for an extreme weather phenomenon, wherein thick coatings of ice develop as fluctuating conditions liquefy and refreeze the snow, locking in the reindeers' key winter food, lichen. This phenomenon is a result of global heating, which is taking place up to four times faster in the Polar region than globally.

Previously, I visited Sara in the Norwegian far north during a severe cold period and joined Sámi herders on their motorized sleds in chilly conditions as they transported trailers of animal nutrition on to the barren frozen landscape to distribute through labor. These animals gathered round us, pawing the frozen ground in futility for mossy morsels. This costly and labour-intensive method is having a significant effect on animal rearing—and on the animals' natural survival. But the other option is malnutrition. When such conditions become commonplace, reindeer are succumbing—some from lack of food, others submerging after sinking in water bodies through unstable frozen surfaces. To some extent, the work is a tribute to them. "Through the stacking of materials, in a way I'm introducing the goavvi to London," says Sara.

Opposing Worldviews

The sculpture also emphasizes the stark difference between the industrial interpretation of electricity as a resource to be exploited for gain and livelihood and the Sámi worldview of life force as an natural essence in creatures, humans, and nature. This venue's history 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, river barriers, and extraction sites on their native soil; the Sámi argue their legal protections, ways of life, and traditions are endangered. "It's very difficult being such a tiny group to stand your ground when the justifications are based on global sustainability," Sara observes. "Resource exploitation has appropriated the rhetoric of sustainability, but still it's just aiming to find more suitable ways to maintain habits of consumption."

Individual Struggles

The artist and her family have personally clashed with the Norwegian government over its increasingly stringent policies on herding. In 2016, Sara's brother initiated a sequence of ultimately unsuccessful legal cases over the forced culling of his herd, ostensibly to stop excessive feeding. To back him, Sara produced a four-year series of artworks called Pile O'Sápmi comprising a colossal curtain of 400 cranial remains, which was displayed at the 2017 art exhibition Documenta 14 and later purchased by the National Museum of Oslo, where it hangs in the entryway.

The Role of Art in Awareness

For numerous Indigenous people, creative work appears the exclusive sphere in which they can be understood by people of other nations. In 2022, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|