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Attendees to Tate Modern are accustomed to unexpected encounters in its expansive Turbine Hall. They have relaxed under an simulated sun, descended down amusement rides, and observed AI-powered sea creatures hovering through the air. Yet this marks the inaugural time they will be engaging themselves in the detailed nose cavities of a reindeer. The latest artistic project for this cavernous space—developed by Indigenous Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—welcomes gallerygoers into a maze-like design modeled after the enlarged inside of a reindeer's nasal passages. Once inside, they can meander around or chill out on reindeer hides, listening on earphones to community leaders sharing tales and knowledge.

Focus on the Nasal Passages

Why the nose? It may sound quirky, but the artwork honors a rarely recognized scientific wonder: scientists have uncovered that in a fraction of a second, the reindeer's nose can raise the temperature of the incoming air it inhales by 80 degrees celsius, allowing the animal to endure in extreme Arctic conditions. Enlarging the nose to bigger than a person, Sara explains, "produces a sense of inferiority that you as a human being are not superior over nature." Sara is a former reporter, writer for kids, and environmental activist, who hails from a herding family in the far north of Norway. "Perhaps that fosters the chance to shift your outlook or evoke some humbleness," she adds.

An Homage to Sámi Culture

The winding design is part of a features in Sara's immersive exhibition honoring the culture, understanding, and philosophy of the Sámi, Europe's only Indigenous people. Traditionally mobile, the Sámi count roughly 100,000 people spread across the Norwegian north, Finland, the Swedish Lapland, and the Russian Arctic (an area they call Sápmi). They've endured discrimination, forced assimilation, and eradication of their language by all four nations. By focusing on the reindeer, an creature at the heart of the Sámi mythology and founding narrative, the work also draws attention to the group's challenges relating to the global warming, land dispossession, and external control.

Meaning in Elements

On the extended access ramp, there's a soaring, 26-metre sculpture of skins ensnared by utility lines. It represents a metaphor for the political and economic systems restricting the Sámi. Partly a utility pole, part spiritual ascent, this section of the installation, named Goavve-, points to the Sámi word for an harsh environmental condition, whereby dense coatings of ice appear as fluctuating weather liquefy and solidify again the snow, trapping the reindeers' primary winter food, lichen. Goavvi is a outcome of global heating, which is taking place up to much more rapidly in the Arctic than elsewhere.

Previously, I visited Sara in a remote town during a icy season and joined Sámi reindeer keepers on their motorized sleds in freezing temperatures as they transported trailers of supplementary feed on to the barren Arctic plains to dispense manually. The herd surrounded round us, scratching the icy ground in vain attempts for vegetative bits. This costly and demanding method is having a significant influence on reindeer husbandry—and on the animals' natural survival. However the alternative is death. As goavvi winters become commonplace, reindeer are succumbing—a number from starvation, others submerging after plunging into streams through thinning ice sheets. In a sense, the art is a monument to them. "With the layering of materials, in a way I'm transporting the phenomenon to London," says Sara.

Opposing Belief Systems

The sculpture also emphasizes the stark contrast between the western interpretation of energy as a asset to be utilized for economic benefit and existence and the Sámi worldview of vitality as an innate life force in animals, individuals, and land. The gallery's past as a fossil fuel plant is tied up in this, as is what the Sámi view as green colonialism by Nordic countries. While attempting to be standard bearers for sustainable power, Scandinavian countries have locked horns with the Sámi over the development of wind energy projects, river barriers, and mines on their ancestral land; the Sámi assert their legal protections, ways of life, and way of life are at risk. "It's very difficult being such a small minority to protect your rights when the reasons are grounded in environmental protection," Sara observes. "Extractivism has adopted the discourse of environmentalism, but still it's just striving to find more suitable ways to maintain practices of use."

Family Struggles

She and her relatives have themselves clashed with the state authorities over its increasingly stringent policies on herding. In 2016, Sara's sibling embarked on a set of ultimately unsuccessful court actions over the required reduction of his livestock, ostensibly to stop excessive feeding. In support, Sara developed a extended set of creations titled Pile O'Sápmi featuring a huge curtain of four hundred cranial remains, which was exhibited at the 2017 event Documenta 14 and later purchased by the National Museum of Oslo, where it hangs in the entrance.

Creative Expression as Activism

For numerous Indigenous people, art appears the sole sphere in which they can be understood by outsiders. In 2022, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|