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Attendees to Tate Modern are used to surprising displays in its vast Turbine Hall. They have relaxed under an man-made sun, descended down amusement rides, and witnessed robotic jellyfish floating through the air. However this marks the first time they will be venturing themselves in the intricate nose chambers of a reindeer. The current artistic project for this immense space—created by Native Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—welcomes gallerygoers into a maze-like design inspired by the expanded interior of a reindeer's nose passages. Upon entering, they can wander around or relax on pelts, tuning in on headphones to tribal seniors telling tales and knowledge.

The Significance of the Nose

Why choose the nasal structure? It may appear whimsical, but the artwork celebrates a obscure scientific wonder: researchers have uncovered that in a fraction of a second, the reindeer's nose can raise the temperature of the incoming air it inhales by eighty degrees, allowing the animal to survive in harsh Arctic conditions. Scaling the nose to bigger than a person, Sara says, "produces a sense of insignificance that you as a human being are not in control over nature." Sara is a former journalist, children's author, and land defender, who is from a herding family in the Norwegian Arctic. "Possibly that fosters the possibility to change your outlook or spark some humbleness," she continues.

A Tribute to Sámi Culture

The maze-like design is one of several features in Sara's absorbing commission showcasing the traditions, understanding, and worldview of the Sámi, Europe's only Indigenous people. Traditionally mobile, the Sámi count roughly 100,000 people distributed across the Norwegian north, the Finnish Arctic, the Swedish Lapland, and the Russian Arctic (an territory they call Sápmi). They have faced persecution, forced assimilation, and suppression of their language by all four states. Through highlighting the reindeer, an creature at the core of the Sámi cosmology and origin tale, the work also spotlights the people's challenges associated with the climate crisis, loss of territory, and imperialism.

Meaning in Elements

Along the lengthy entry slope, there's a looming, eighty-five-foot structure of skins trapped by power and light cables. It serves as a metaphor for the societal frameworks restricting the Sámi. Partly a utility pole, part celestial ladder, this part of the exhibit, titled Goavve-, points to the Sámi word for an harsh environmental condition, in which dense coatings of ice form as changing weather thaw and solidify again the snow, encasing the reindeers' key winter food, fungus. The condition is a consequence of planetary warming, which is happening up to four times faster in the Polar region than globally.

Three years ago, I traveled to see Sara in the Norwegian far north during a severe cold period and accompanied Sámi herders on their snowmobiles in freezing temperatures as they hauled trailers of supplementary feed on to the exposed tundra to distribute by hand. These animals surrounded round us, pawing the frozen ground in vain for vegetative morsels. This resource-intensive and labour-intensive process is having a drastic impact on animal rearing—and on the animals' self-sufficiency. However the alternative is malnutrition. As these icy periods become routine, reindeer are dying—some from hunger, others suffocating after falling into lakes and rivers through thinning ice sheets. In a sense, the work is a monument to them. "By overlapping of components, in a way I'm introducing the phenomenon to London," says Sara.

Diverging Worldviews

The installation also highlights the clear divergence between the industrial view of electricity as a commodity to be utilized for gain and livelihood and the Sámi outlook of life force as an natural essence in animals, people, and the environment. The gallery's history as a fossil fuel plant is linked with this, as is what the Sámi see as eco-imperialism by Scandinavian states. While attempting to be exemplars for clean sources, these states have disagreed with the Sámi over the development of windfarms, hydroelectric dams, and mines on their native soil; the Sámi argue their fundamental freedoms, livelihoods, and traditions are endangered. "It's very difficult being such a small minority to stand your ground when the reasons are based on saving the world," Sara comments. "Extractivism has adopted the language of environmentalism, but yet it's just aiming to find more suitable ways to persist in practices of consumption."

Personal Struggles

She and her relatives have personally conflicted with the national administration over its ever-stricter regulations on animal husbandry. A few years ago, Sara's sibling undertook a series of ultimately unsuccessful court actions over the forced culling of his livestock, apparently to stop overgrazing. To back him, Sara developed a four-year set of creations named Pile O'Sápmi featuring a huge screen of numerous animal bones, which was displayed at the 2017's show Documenta 14 and later acquired by the National Museum of Oslo, where it resides in the entrance.

Creative Expression as Awareness

For numerous Indigenous people, visual expression is the only domain in which they can be heard by people of other nations. In 2022, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|