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Attendees to Tate Modern are accustomed to surprising experiences in its spacious Turbine Hall. They've relaxed under an simulated sun, descended down amusement rides, and witnessed AI-powered jellyfish drifting through the air. But this marks the first time they will be venturing themselves in the complex nose passages of a reindeer. The latest creative installation for this cavernous space—developed by Indigenous Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—invites visitors into a winding construction inspired by the enlarged interior of a reindeer's nasal cavities. Upon entering, they can meander around or chill out on pelts, tuning in on headphones to tribal seniors telling narratives and insights.

Why the Nose?

Why the nose? It might seem whimsical, but the exhibit honors a obscure scientific wonder: researchers have uncovered that in under a second, the reindeer's nose can warm the incoming air it takes in by 80 degrees celsius, helping the animal to endure in inhospitable Arctic temperatures. Expanding the nose to larger than human size, Sara notes, "generates a feeling of insignificance that you as a individual are not dominant over nature." Sara is a former journalist, young adult author, and rights advocate, who comes from a reindeer-herding family in the far north of Norway. "Perhaps that fosters the possibility to shift your perspective or evoke some humbleness," she states.

A Celebration to Indigenous Heritage

The winding design is among various components in Sara's engaging commission celebrating the culture, knowledge, and beliefs of the Sámi, Europe's only Indigenous people. Traditionally mobile, the Sámi number roughly 100,000 people ranged across the Norwegian north, Finland, the Swedish Lapland, and the Russian Arctic (an region they call Sápmi). They have endured discrimination, cultural suppression, and eradication of their dialect by all four nations. By focusing on the reindeer, an animal at the core of the Sámi cosmology and founding narrative, the installation also highlights the people's issues relating to the climate crisis, loss of territory, and colonialism.

Metaphor in Materials

At the lengthy access incline, there's a towering, 26-meter formation of reindeer hides entangled by utility lines. It represents a analogy for the political and economic systems restricting the Sámi. Part pylon, part heavenly staircase, this section of the artwork, titled Goavve-, refers to the Sámi word for an severe climatic event, in which thick sheets of ice develop as fluctuating conditions thaw and ice over the snow, locking in the reindeers' primary winter nourishment, moss. The condition is a outcome of planetary warming, which is happening up to at an accelerated rate in the Arctic than elsewhere.

A few years back, I visited Sara in a remote town during a severe cold period and accompanied Sámi reindeer keepers on their motorized sleds in freezing temperatures as they carried trailers of supplementary feed on to the barren frozen landscape to provide by hand. The reindeer gathered round us, digging the slippery ground in vain for lichen-covered morsels. This costly and demanding procedure is having a severe influence on herding practices—and on the animals' self-sufficiency. Yet the other option is death. As these icy periods become frequent, reindeer are perishing—some from lack of food, others submerging after plunging into streams through thinning ice sheets. In a sense, the art is a monument to them. "By overlapping of materials, in a way I'm bringing the goavvi to London," says Sara.

Contrasting Perspectives

This artwork also underscores the clear difference between the industrial view of power as a resource to be harnessed for economic benefit and survival and the Sámi outlook of vitality as an inherent power in animals, people, and land. Tate Modern's history as a coal and oil power station is connected to this, as is what the Sámi view as eco-imperialism by Scandinavian states. In their efforts to be standard bearers for clean sources, Nordic nations have disagreed with the Sámi over the development of windfarms, hydroelectric dams, and mines on their traditional territory; the Sámi assert their fundamental freedoms, incomes, and way of life are at risk. "It's very difficult being such a small minority to protect your rights when the arguments are rooted in environmental protection," Sara comments. "Extractivism has appropriated the rhetoric of sustainability, but nonetheless it's just aiming to find better ways to persist in patterns of consumption."

Individual Struggles

She and her kin have personally conflicted with the state authorities over its ever-stricter regulations on animal husbandry. In 2016, Sara's sibling initiated a sequence of finally failed court actions over the mandatory slaughter of his animals, ostensibly to stop overgrazing. As a show of solidarity, Sara produced a four-year set of creations titled Pile O'Sápmi featuring a colossal curtain of numerous cranial remains, which was displayed at the the show Documenta 14 and later obtained by the national institution, where it is displayed in the entrance.

Creative Expression as Advocacy

For numerous Indigenous people, art is the sole sphere in which they can be listened to by people of other nations. Recently, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|