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Guests to Tate Modern are used to surprising displays in its vast Turbine Hall. They've sunbathed under an man-made sun, slid down spiral slides, and observed AI-powered sea creatures floating through the air. However this marks the first time they will be venturing themselves in the complex nose cavities of a reindeer. The latest creative installation for this huge space—created by Native Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—invites patrons into a labyrinthine structure modeled after the scaled-up inside of a reindeer's nose airways. Upon entering, they can meander around or unwind on reindeer hides, listening on earphones to Sámi elders imparting tales and insights.

Why the Nose?

Why choose the nasal structure? It may sound whimsical, but the exhibit pays tribute to a obscure scientific wonder: researchers have discovered that in a fraction of a second, the reindeer's nose can raise the temperature of the ambient air it breathes in by 80°C, allowing the creature to thrive in harsh Arctic climates. Expanding the nose to larger than human size, Sara notes, "creates a perception of inferiority that you as a person are not superior over nature." Sara is a former journalist, young adult author, and land defender, who is from a pastoral family in the Norwegian Arctic. "Perhaps that fosters the chance to change your viewpoint or trigger some humility," she states.

A Tribute to Traditional Ways

The winding structure is one of several elements in Sara's engaging exhibition celebrating the culture, science, and beliefs of the Sámi, the continent's original inhabitants. Traditionally mobile, the Sámi number about 100,000 people distributed across northern Norway, the Finnish Arctic, Sweden, and the Russian Arctic (an region they call Sápmi). They've endured oppression, cultural suppression, and suppression of their dialect by all four nations. Through highlighting the reindeer, an animal at the heart of the Sámi mythology and creation story, the installation also highlights the community's struggles associated with the environmental emergency, loss of territory, and imperialism.

Symbolism in Components

At the lengthy access ramp, there's a looming, eighty-five-foot structure of skins trapped by electrical wires. It represents a analogy for the societal frameworks constraining the Sámi. Part pylon, part spiritual ascent, this component of the exhibit, named Goavve-, refers to the Sámi term for an severe climatic event, whereby solid coatings of ice develop as fluctuating weather thaw and solidify again the snow, trapping the reindeers' key cold-season food, lichen. This phenomenon is a outcome of planetary warming, which is occurring up to much more rapidly in the Polar region than in other regions.

A few years back, I met with Sara in Guovdageaidnu during a severe cold period and accompanied Sámi pastoralists on their motorized sleds in chilly conditions as they carried containers of animal nutrition on to the wind-scoured frozen landscape to provide manually. The reindeer crowded round us, pawing the icy ground in vain for vegetative morsels. This expensive and laborious procedure is having a drastic impact on herding practices—and on the animals' natural survival. But the alternative is malnutrition. As these icy periods become frequent, reindeer are dying—some from hunger, others drowning after sinking in streams through prematurely melting ice. To some extent, the work is a monument to them. "Through the stacking of elements, in a way I'm transporting the goavvi to London," says Sara.

Opposing Worldviews

This artwork also emphasizes the sharp contrast between the modern understanding of electricity as a asset to be utilized for gain and livelihood and the Sámi outlook of life force as an inherent power in creatures, individuals, and land. The gallery's legacy as a industrial facility is tied up in this, as is what the Sámi view as environmental exploitation by Scandinavian states. While attempting to be exemplars for sustainable power, these states have locked horns with the Sámi over the construction of turbine fields, hydroelectric dams, and extraction sites on their traditional territory; the Sámi assert their human rights, ways of life, and way of life are threatened. "It's very difficult being such a tiny group to protect your rights when the arguments are grounded in saving the world," Sara observes. "Mining practices has co-opted the rhetoric of environmentalism, but yet it's just striving to find more suitable ways to continue patterns of expenditure."

Personal Struggles

The artist and her kin have personally clashed with the national administration over its ever-stricter rules on reindeer management. In 2016, Sara's brother embarked on a series of finally failed court actions over the required reduction of his herd, ostensibly to stop excessive feeding. To back him, Sara created a extended set of pieces titled Pile O'Sápmi including a colossal drape of four hundred reindeer skulls, which was exhibited at the the art exhibition Documenta 14 and later obtained by the National Museum of Oslo, where it resides in the entryway.

Creative Expression as Advocacy

For many Sámi, art appears the only realm in which they can be listened to by the global community. In 2022, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|