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Attendees to Tate Modern are used to unexpected encounters in its expansive Turbine Hall. They have basked under an man-made sun, slid down amusement rides, and witnessed robotic jellyfish drifting through the air. Yet this marks the first time they will be venturing themselves in the detailed nasal passages of a reindeer. The current artistic project for this immense space—created by Native Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—encourages gallerygoers into a maze-like structure inspired by the enlarged interior of a reindeer's nose airways. Inside, they can wander around or unwind on reindeer hides, tuning in on earphones to Sámi elders sharing narratives and wisdom.

The Significance of the Nose

Why choose the nasal structure? It might appear quirky, but the artwork celebrates a obscure scientific wonder: experts have found that in a fraction of a second, the reindeer's nose can heat the incoming air it inhales by 80°C, allowing the animal to thrive in inhospitable Arctic conditions. Expanding the nose to human-scale dimensions, Sara explains, "produces a feeling of inferiority that you as a human being are not dominant over nature." Sara is a former reporter, young adult author, and rights advocate, who comes from a pastoral family in the far north of Norway. "Possibly that generates the chance to shift your perspective or evoke some humbleness," she continues.

A Celebration to Indigenous Heritage

The winding structure is among various elements in Sara's immersive commission honoring the heritage, understanding, and beliefs of the Sámi, Europe's only Indigenous people. Semi-nomadic, the Sámi number about 100,000 people ranged across northern Norway, Finland, the Swedish Lapland, and the Russian Arctic (an area they call Sápmi). They've endured persecution, integration policies, and repression of their dialect by all four states. With an emphasis on the reindeer, an creature at the heart of the Sámi belief system and creation story, the installation also highlights the community's issues associated with the environmental emergency, land dispossession, and colonialism.

Metaphor in Elements

Along the lengthy access slope, there's a looming, eighty-five-foot formation of skins ensnared by power and light cables. It serves as a metaphor for the societal frameworks restricting the Sámi. Part pylon, part heavenly staircase, this section of the installation, named Goavve-, relates to the Sámi name for an extreme weather phenomenon, in which dense coatings of ice form as varying conditions thaw and refreeze the snow, trapping the reindeers' key cold-season nourishment, lichen. This phenomenon is a outcome of global heating, which is taking place up to four times faster in the Polar region than in other regions.

Three years ago, I visited Sara in Guovdageaidnu during a icy season and joined Sámi herders on their Arctic vehicles in biting cold as they hauled carts of animal nutrition on to the wind-scoured Arctic plains to provide through labor. The reindeer surrounded round us, scratching the frozen ground in vain attempts for lichen-covered bits. This costly and demanding process is having a drastic effect on reindeer husbandry—and on the animals' self-sufficiency. However the other option is death. As goavvi winters become commonplace, reindeer are succumbing—some from hunger, others suffocating after sinking in streams through prematurely melting ice. In a sense, the art is a monument to them. "Through the stacking of components, in a way I'm transporting the condition to London," says Sara.

Opposing Worldviews

This artwork also underscores the sharp contrast between the western understanding of electricity as a asset to be utilized for profit and livelihood and the Sámi outlook of vitality as an natural essence in creatures, people, and the environment. The gallery's history as a industrial facility is tied up in this, as is what the Sámi consider green colonialism by Nordic countries. In their efforts to be exemplars for sustainable power, these states have disagreed with the Sámi over the building of wind energy projects, river barriers, and mines on their traditional territory; the Sámi argue their human rights, incomes, and traditions are at risk. "It's very difficult being such a limited population to defend yourself when the arguments are based on global sustainability," Sara observes. "Extractivism has adopted the language of sustainability, but still it's just aiming to find more suitable ways to persist in patterns of consumption."

Family Conflicts

The artist and her relatives have personally disagreed with the state authorities over its ever-stricter rules on reindeer management. In 2016, Sara's brother undertook a sequence of unsuccessful lawsuits over the required reduction of his livestock, ostensibly to stop vegetation depletion. To back him, Sara produced a extended set of creations named Pile O'Sápmi comprising a huge drape of numerous animal bones, which was exhibited at the 2017 event Documenta 14 and later purchased by the National Museum of Oslo, where it is displayed in the lobby.

Art as Awareness

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