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Attendees to Tate Modern are used to unusual encounters in its expansive Turbine Hall. They've relaxed under an simulated sun, descended down amusement rides, and seen automated jellyfish floating through the air. However this marks the first time they will be venturing themselves in the intricate nose passages of a reindeer. The latest artist commission for this huge space—developed by Indigenous Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—welcomes visitors into a maze-like construction inspired by the scaled-up inside of a reindeer's nasal cavities. Inside, they can meander around or unwind on pelts, tuning in on earphones to tribal seniors telling tales and insights.

The Significance of the Nose

What's the focus on the nose? It may appear playful, but the installation honors a obscure biological feat: scientists have uncovered that in a fraction of a second, the reindeer's nose can raise the temperature of the incoming air it breathes in by eighty degrees, allowing the animal to thrive in harsh Arctic conditions. Enlarging the nose to human-scale dimensions, Sara says, "produces a feeling of smallness that you as a human being are not superior over nature." Sara is a ex- writer, young adult author, and environmental activist, who comes from a pastoral family in the far north of Norway. "Possibly that fosters the chance to alter your outlook or evoke some humbleness," she adds.

An Homage to Indigenous Heritage

The winding design is among various elements in Sara's engaging commission celebrating the culture, understanding, and philosophy of the Sámi, the sole native group in Europe. Semi-nomadic, the Sámi number roughly 100,000 people ranged across northern Norway, Finland, Sweden, and the Russian Arctic (an region they call Sápmi). They have experienced persecution, integration policies, and suppression of their language by all four states. By focusing on the reindeer, an animal at the heart of the Sámi belief system and creation story, the art also highlights the people's issues connected to the climate crisis, property rights, and external control.

Metaphor in Elements

On the lengthy entry slope, there's a soaring, 26-meter formation of pelts trapped by electrical wires. It represents a analogy for the political and economic systems limiting the Sámi. Like an electrical tower, part heavenly staircase, this component of the installation, titled Goavve-, points to the Sámi word for an severe climatic event, whereby dense layers of ice appear as changing temperatures thaw and refreeze the snow, locking in the reindeers' primary cold-season sustenance, lichen. The condition is a consequence of planetary warming, which is occurring up to at an accelerated rate in the Far North than elsewhere.

Three years ago, I visited Sara in a remote town during a icy season and accompanied Sámi herders on their snowmobiles in biting cold as they carried trailers of supplementary feed on to the exposed frozen landscape to distribute manually. The herd crowded round us, pawing the icy ground in vain attempts for lichen-covered bits. This expensive and labour-intensive method is having a severe influence on reindeer husbandry—and on the animals' natural survival. Yet the other option is death. When such conditions become commonplace, reindeer are dying—some from lack of food, others suffocating after sinking in water bodies through unstable frozen surfaces. To some extent, the work is a tribute to them. "By overlapping of materials, in a way I'm transporting the condition to London," says Sara.

Diverging Worldviews

This artwork also underscores the clear difference between the modern view of energy as a commodity to be harnessed for economic benefit and existence and the Sámi outlook of life force as an innate power in animals, people, and land. Tate Modern's legacy as a industrial facility is tied up in this, as is what the Sámi see as green colonialism by regional governments. While attempting to be exemplars for sustainable power, these states have locked horns with the Sámi over the construction of turbine fields, river barriers, and digging operations on their native soil; the Sámi contend their fundamental freedoms, livelihoods, and way of life are threatened. "It's hard being such a tiny group to protect your rights when the justifications are based on global sustainability," Sara comments. "Extractivism has co-opted the language of ecology, but still it's just aiming to find better ways to persist in practices of expenditure."

Family Conflicts

She and her kin have personally conflicted with the national administration over its ever-stricter policies on herding. In 2016, Sara's sibling embarked on a sequence of unsuccessful lawsuits over the forced culling of his animals, ostensibly to stop vegetation depletion. In support, Sara produced a multi-year collection of creations named Pile O'Sápmi comprising a huge curtain of 400 animal bones, which was exhibited at the 2017's show Documenta 14 and later acquired by the National Museum of Oslo, where it resides in the lobby.

Creative Expression as Activism

For many Sámi, visual expression appears the exclusive realm in which they can be heard by the global community. In 2022, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|