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Visitors to Tate Modern are used to unexpected displays in its expansive Turbine Hall. They've basked under an man-made sun, glided down spiral slides, and observed automated jellyfish hovering through the air. Yet this marks the initial time they will be immersing themselves in the complex nose cavities of a reindeer. The newest artistic project for this cavernous space—created by Indigenous Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—invites patrons into a maze-like structure based on the expanded interior of a reindeer's nasal cavities. Inside, they can meander around or chill out on pelts, listening on headphones to community leaders telling stories and knowledge.

The Significance of the Nose

What's the focus on the nose? It may seem playful, but the exhibit honors a obscure scientific wonder: experts have uncovered that in less than one second, the reindeer's nose can raise the temperature of the surrounding air it inhales by 80°C, allowing the creature to endure in extreme Arctic conditions. Enlarging the nose to human-scale dimensions, Sara says, "generates a sense of insignificance that you as a human being are not in control over nature." The artist is a ex- journalist, young adult author, and environmental activist, who comes from a reindeer-herding family in the Norwegian Arctic. "Perhaps that creates the chance to shift your viewpoint or spark some modesty," she continues.

A Celebration to Indigenous Heritage

The maze-like design is one of several features in Sara's absorbing exhibition honoring the heritage, science, and philosophy of the Sámi, the continent's original inhabitants. Semi-nomadic, the Sámi count roughly 100,000 people distributed across northern Norway, the Finnish Arctic, Sweden, and the Kola region (an area they call Sápmi). They've faced persecution, forced assimilation, and repression of their dialect by all four nations. By focusing on the reindeer, an animal at the heart of the Sámi mythology and founding narrative, the art also highlights the people's challenges connected to the climate crisis, loss of territory, and colonialism.

Metaphor in Elements

On the extended access slope, there's a soaring, 26-meter structure of skins ensnared by power and light cables. It serves as a symbol for the societal frameworks restricting the Sámi. Partly a utility pole, part celestial ladder, this component of the exhibit, called Goavve-, relates to the Sámi name for an harsh environmental condition, wherein dense layers of ice appear as varying conditions liquefy and solidify again the snow, locking in the reindeers' key winter nourishment, fungus. The condition is a result of planetary warming, which is taking place up to much more rapidly in the Far North than globally.

A few years back, I traveled to see Sara in the Norwegian far north during a icy season and accompanied Sámi reindeer keepers on their Arctic vehicles in biting cold as they transported trailers of food pellets on to the exposed tundra to dispense through labor. The herd crowded round us, pawing the icy ground in futility for vegetative pieces. This resource-intensive and demanding procedure is having a drastic effect on reindeer husbandry—and on the animals' natural survival. Yet the alternative is death. As goavvi winters become frequent, reindeer are perishing—a number from lack of food, others drowning after falling into water bodies through unstable frozen surfaces. In a sense, the art is a monument to them. "With the layering of elements, in a way I'm introducing the goavvi to London," says Sara.

Opposing Perspectives

The installation also underscores the sharp difference between the western understanding of electricity as a resource to be utilized for economic benefit and existence and the Sámi worldview of vitality as an inherent power in animals, individuals, and nature. Tate Modern's past as a coal and oil power station is connected to this, as is what the Sámi consider green colonialism by regional governments. As they strive to be exemplars for clean sources, Nordic nations have locked horns with the Sámi over the building of wind energy projects, water power facilities, and digging operations on their traditional territory; the Sámi contend their fundamental freedoms, livelihoods, and way of life are threatened. "It's hard being such a small minority to stand your ground when the arguments are rooted in saving the world," Sara observes. "Resource exploitation has appropriated the language of environmentalism, but still it's just striving to find more suitable ways to persist in patterns of expenditure."

Individual Struggles

The artist and her kin have themselves disagreed with the state authorities over its increasingly stringent rules on herding. A few years ago, Sara's sibling embarked on a series of unsuccessful lawsuits over the mandatory slaughter of his livestock, ostensibly to stop vegetation depletion. To back him, Sara developed a multi-year collection of pieces titled Pile O'Sápmi including a colossal curtain of numerous cranial remains, which was displayed at the 2017 show Documenta 14 and later obtained by the national institution, where it hangs in the entryway.

The Role of Art in Advocacy

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