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Attendees to Tate Modern are used to unexpected experiences in its expansive Turbine Hall. They've basked under an artificial sun, glided down spiral slides, and seen robotic jellyfish drifting through the air. However this marks the first time they will be engaging themselves in the complex nose chambers of a reindeer. The latest artist commission for this cavernous space—developed by Indigenous Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—welcomes gallerygoers into a labyrinthine construction based on the scaled-up inside of a reindeer's nose cavities. Once inside, they can stroll around or relax on skins, listening on earphones to community leaders sharing narratives and wisdom.

Why the Nose?

Why choose the nasal structure? It could appear playful, but the exhibit pays tribute to a obscure scientific wonder: researchers have discovered that in under a second, the reindeer's nose can raise the temperature of the ambient air it breathes in by eighty degrees, enabling the animal to thrive in extreme Arctic temperatures. Scaling the nose to larger than human size, Sara notes, "produces a feeling of insignificance that you as a human being are not in control over nature." She is a former journalist, young adult author, and environmental activist, who hails from a herding family in the far north of Norway. "Maybe that creates the potential to shift your outlook or spark some humbleness," she continues.

A Celebration to Traditional Ways

The maze-like installation is among various features in Sara's immersive exhibition honoring the culture, understanding, and worldview of the Sámi, the continent's original inhabitants. Semi-nomadic, the Sámi total approximately 100,000 people ranged across northern Norway, the Finnish Arctic, the Swedish Lapland, and the Kola region (an area they call Sápmi). They have faced persecution, forced assimilation, and suppression of their language by all four states. With an emphasis on the reindeer, an animal at the center of the Sámi mythology and creation story, the work also highlights the group's issues connected to the global warming, loss of territory, and external control.

Metaphor in Materials

At the lengthy entrance ramp, there's a soaring, 26-meter formation of skins trapped by power and light cables. It can be read as a symbol for the societal frameworks restricting the Sámi. Like an electrical tower, part spiritual ascent, this section of the installation, called Goavve-, points to the Sámi word for an extreme weather phenomenon, wherein dense layers of ice appear as changing temperatures melt and solidify again the snow, trapping the reindeers' key winter food, lichen. This phenomenon is a outcome of global heating, which is taking place up to much more rapidly in the Arctic than in other regions.

Previously, I met with Sara in the Norwegian far north during a icy season and accompanied Sámi herders on their Arctic vehicles in chilly conditions as they transported containers of animal nutrition on to the wind-scoured Arctic plains to provide through labor. These animals gathered round us, scratching the frozen ground in vain attempts for mossy morsels. This resource-intensive and labour-intensive procedure is having a drastic effect on animal rearing—and on the animals' self-sufficiency. But the choice is death. As these icy periods become commonplace, reindeer are perishing—some from lack of food, others drowning after plunging into streams through thinning ice sheets. On one level, the work is a memorial to them. "With the layering of elements, in a way I'm bringing the phenomenon to London," says Sara.

Contrasting Worldviews

This artwork also underscores the clear difference between the western understanding of electricity as a asset to be utilized for gain and survival and the Sámi worldview of vitality as an natural essence in animals, people, and the environment. Tate Modern's legacy as a coal and oil power station is tied up in this, as is what the Sámi view as green colonialism by Scandinavian states. As they strive to be leaders for clean sources, Scandinavian countries have clashed with the Sámi over the development of windfarms, river barriers, and mines on their native soil; the Sámi contend their legal protections, livelihoods, and traditions are threatened. "It's very difficult being such a tiny group to stand your ground when the justifications are grounded in saving the world," Sara notes. "Resource exploitation has appropriated the language of ecology, but nonetheless it's just aiming to find alternative ways to persist in habits of use."

Individual Challenges

The artist and her family have personally conflicted with the state authorities over its tightening rules on animal husbandry. A few years ago, Sara's sibling undertook a sequence of unsuccessful court actions over the mandatory slaughter of his herd, ostensibly to stop overgrazing. As a show of solidarity, Sara created a extended collection of creations titled Pile O'Sápmi including a huge drape of four hundred reindeer skulls, which was shown at the the art exhibition Documenta 14 and later acquired by the public gallery, where it is displayed in the entrance.

Art as Activism

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