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Guests to Tate Modern are used to unusual displays in its expansive Turbine Hall. They have sunbathed under an man-made sun, descended down amusement rides, and seen automated jellyfish drifting through the air. Yet this marks the first time they will be immersing themselves in the detailed nasal passages of a reindeer. The latest creative installation for this huge space—created by Indigenous Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—welcomes visitors into a winding structure modeled after the enlarged interior of a reindeer's nasal cavities. Upon entering, they can stroll around or relax on pelts, listening on headphones to Sámi elders sharing tales and insights.

Why the Nose?

What's the focus on the nose? It may seem whimsical, but the exhibit celebrates a little-known scientific wonder: researchers have uncovered that in a fraction of a second, the reindeer's nose can heat the incoming air it takes in by 80 degrees celsius, allowing the animal to survive in inhospitable Arctic conditions. Enlarging the nose to human-scale dimensions, Sara notes, "produces a perception of smallness that you as a human being are not superior over nature." Sara is a former journalist, young adult author, and rights advocate, who is from a herding family in the far north of Norway. "Maybe that creates the potential to alter your outlook or spark some humility," she adds.

A Tribute to Indigenous Heritage

The labyrinthine design is one of several elements in Sara's absorbing commission celebrating the culture, understanding, and beliefs of the Sámi, the sole native group in Europe. Traditionally mobile, the Sámi number roughly 100,000 people distributed across northern Norway, Finland, Sweden, and Russia's Kola Peninsula (an area they call Sápmi). They have endured discrimination, integration policies, and eradication of their language by all four states. With an emphasis on the reindeer, an animal at the core of the Sámi cosmology and creation story, the installation also draws attention to the community's struggles connected to the climate crisis, property rights, and imperialism.

Metaphor in Materials

Along the extended entrance incline, there's a soaring, 26-meter formation of reindeer hides trapped by electrical wires. It represents a metaphor for the governance and financial structures limiting the Sámi. Part pylon, part heavenly staircase, this part of the installation, named Goavve-, points to the Sámi term for an severe climatic event, in which dense sheets of ice appear as varying conditions thaw and solidify again the snow, locking in the reindeers' main winter nourishment, moss. The condition is a consequence of planetary warming, which is happening up to four times faster in the Far North than globally.

A few years back, I traveled to see Sara in Guovdageaidnu during a icy season and accompanied Sámi pastoralists on their motorized sleds in freezing temperatures as they carried carts of supplementary feed on to the barren Arctic plains to dispense by hand. These animals surrounded round us, digging the icy ground in vain attempts for vegetative morsels. This costly and demanding procedure is having a significant impact on herding practices—and on the animals' natural survival. Yet the choice is death. When such conditions become routine, reindeer are dying—some from starvation, others drowning after falling into streams through thinning ice sheets. On one level, the art is a memorial to them. "By overlapping of elements, in a way I'm introducing the condition to London," says Sara.

Diverging Worldviews

The sculpture also emphasizes the stark contrast between the industrial interpretation of electricity as a commodity to be harnessed for gain and survival and the Sámi outlook of energy as an natural essence in animals, individuals, and land. This venue's history as a fossil fuel plant is connected to this, as is what the Sámi see as environmental exploitation by regional governments. In their efforts to be leaders for clean sources, Nordic nations have locked horns with the Sámi over the building of wind energy projects, hydroelectric dams, and mines on their native soil; the Sámi argue their fundamental freedoms, ways of life, and way of life are at risk. "It's challenging being such a small minority to defend yourself when the arguments are grounded in saving the world," Sara notes. "Extractivism has appropriated the rhetoric of sustainability, but nonetheless it's just attempting to find more suitable ways to maintain patterns of consumption."

Family Conflicts

She and her family have themselves disagreed with the national administration over its ever-stricter regulations on herding. A few years ago, Sara's brother undertook a sequence of ultimately unsuccessful lawsuits over the forced culling of his animals, ostensibly to stop vegetation depletion. As a show of solidarity, Sara developed a extended series of creations named Pile O'Sápmi including a huge screen of four hundred animal bones, which was exhibited at the 2017's art exhibition Documenta 14 and later obtained by the national institution, where it resides in the entryway.

Art as Awareness

Among the community, visual expression appears the sole sphere in which they can be heard by outsiders. In 2022, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|