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Attendees to Tate Modern are familiar to surprising displays in its spacious Turbine Hall. They've sunbathed under an artificial sun, descended down spiral slides, and witnessed automated jellyfish hovering through the air. But this marks the inaugural time they will be immersing themselves in the detailed nasal chambers of a reindeer. The latest artist commission for this immense space—developed by Indigenous Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—welcomes gallerygoers into a winding design modeled after the enlarged interior of a reindeer's nose cavities. Inside, they can wander around or relax on skins, tuning in on earphones to Sámi elders imparting narratives and insights.

Focus on the Nasal Passages

Why choose the nasal structure? It may seem quirky, but the installation pays tribute to a little-known biological feat: experts have discovered that in less than one second, the reindeer's nose can warm the incoming air it takes in by 80°C, helping the creature to thrive in inhospitable Arctic temperatures. Enlarging the nose to larger than human size, Sara notes, "produces a perception of smallness that you as a individual are not in control over nature." The artist is a former writer, writer for kids, and environmental activist, who is from a herding family in northern Norway. "Perhaps that generates the potential to alter your perspective or trigger some humbleness," she adds.

An Homage to Traditional Ways

The labyrinthine design is one of several elements in Sara's absorbing art project honoring the culture, science, and worldview of the Sámi, the continent's original inhabitants. Traditionally mobile, the Sámi count approximately 100,000 people spread across the Norwegian north, Finland, Sweden, and Russia's Kola Peninsula (an territory they call Sápmi). They've endured discrimination, forced assimilation, and eradication of their dialect by all four states. With an emphasis on the reindeer, an animal at the center of the Sámi belief system and creation story, the work also spotlights the group's struggles connected to the global warming, loss of territory, and external control.

Meaning in Components

At the extended access ramp, there's a towering, eighty-five-foot structure of reindeer hides ensnared by power and light cables. It can be read as a analogy for the societal frameworks restricting the Sámi. Partly a utility pole, part spiritual ascent, this component of the installation, named Goavve-, refers to the Sámi name for an extreme weather phenomenon, in which dense coatings of ice appear as fluctuating conditions thaw and solidify again the snow, encasing the reindeers' primary winter food, moss. This phenomenon is a consequence of global heating, which is taking place up to at an accelerated rate in the Far North than globally.

Three years ago, I traveled to see Sara in Guovdageaidnu during a goavvi winter and accompanied Sámi herders on their motorized sleds in chilly conditions as they carried trailers of food pellets on to the wind-scoured frozen landscape to dispense by hand. These animals gathered round us, scratching the icy ground in vain for vegetative bits. This costly and laborious method is having a severe impact on animal rearing—and on the animals' self-sufficiency. Yet the other option is starvation. As these icy periods become frequent, reindeer are perishing—some from lack of food, others suffocating after plunging into streams through thinning ice sheets. To some extent, the work is a monument to them. "Through the stacking of materials, in a way I'm introducing the condition to London," says Sara.

Opposing Worldviews

The installation also underscores the sharp divergence between the modern understanding of energy as a commodity to be utilized for profit and survival and the Sámi outlook of energy as an innate life force in creatures, humans, and nature. This venue's past as a coal and oil power station is linked with this, as is what the Sámi view as environmental exploitation by regional governments. In their efforts to be standard bearers for clean sources, Scandinavian countries have locked horns with the Sámi over the development of windfarms, hydroelectric dams, and extraction sites on their ancestral land; the Sámi assert their legal protections, ways of life, and culture are threatened. "It's challenging being such a tiny group to defend yourself when the justifications are rooted in global sustainability," Sara notes. "Mining practices has co-opted the discourse of sustainability, but nonetheless it's just aiming to find better ways to continue habits of consumption."

Personal Conflicts

Sara and her kin have themselves disagreed with the state authorities over its ever-stricter rules on animal husbandry. In 2016, Sara's sibling embarked on a series of finally failed lawsuits over the mandatory slaughter of his animals, supposedly to stop overgrazing. To back him, Sara produced a extended collection of pieces titled Pile O'Sápmi comprising a huge drape of numerous animal bones, which was displayed at the 2017's art exhibition Documenta 14 and later obtained by the public gallery, where it resides in the entryway.

Creative Expression as Activism

For many Sámi, visual expression is the only sphere in which they can be understood by the global community. In 2022, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|