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Visitors to Tate Modern are used to surprising experiences in its spacious Turbine Hall. They have basked under an artificial sun, slid down spiral slides, and observed AI-powered sea creatures hovering through the air. Yet this marks the inaugural time they will be venturing themselves in the intricate nose passages of a reindeer. The latest artist commission for this huge space—developed by Native Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—invites patrons into a winding construction inspired by the enlarged interior of a reindeer's nose airways. Once inside, they can wander around or unwind on skins, listening on headphones to community leaders sharing tales and wisdom.

Why the Nose?

Why choose the nasal structure? It might sound playful, but the artwork celebrates a obscure biological feat: scientists have uncovered that in under a second, the reindeer's nose can raise the temperature of the surrounding air it takes in by 80°C, allowing the creature to survive in harsh Arctic temperatures. Enlarging the nose to bigger than a person, Sara notes, "generates a feeling of insignificance that you as a person are not superior over nature." Sara is a ex- writer, writer for kids, and rights advocate, who comes from a herding family in northern Norway. "Maybe that generates the possibility to alter your viewpoint or trigger some modesty," she continues.

An Homage to Indigenous Heritage

The winding installation is part of a features in Sara's immersive art project showcasing the culture, knowledge, and philosophy of the Sámi, the continent's original inhabitants. Semi-nomadic, the Sámi count about 100,000 people distributed across the Norwegian north, the Finnish Arctic, Sweden, and the Russian Arctic (an area they call Sápmi). They have experienced persecution, integration policies, and eradication of their tongue by all four nations. With an emphasis on the reindeer, an animal at the core of the Sámi mythology and origin tale, the art also highlights the people's challenges connected to the global warming, land dispossession, and imperialism.

Symbolism in Materials

On the long entry slope, there's a soaring, 26-meter structure of reindeer hides ensnared by utility lines. It represents a symbol for the political and economic systems restricting the Sámi. Partly a utility pole, part heavenly staircase, this part of the exhibit, named Goavve-, refers to the Sámi word for an severe climatic event, wherein solid layers of ice develop as changing temperatures liquefy and solidify again the snow, locking in the reindeers' main winter nourishment, lichen. This phenomenon is a result of global heating, which is taking place up to much more rapidly in the Far North than elsewhere.

A few years back, I traveled to see Sara in Guovdageaidnu during a goavvi winter and went with Sámi pastoralists on their snowmobiles in biting cold as they hauled containers of food pellets on to the barren frozen landscape to distribute by hand. These animals surrounded round us, scratching the frozen ground in vain for lichen-covered morsels. This expensive and laborious process is having a severe effect on herding practices—and on the animals' independence. Yet the alternative is malnutrition. When such conditions become frequent, reindeer are succumbing—some from hunger, others submerging after plunging into streams through prematurely melting ice. To some extent, the art is a tribute to them. "Through the stacking of components, in a way I'm bringing the goavvi to London," says Sara.

Opposing Belief Systems

This artwork also underscores the stark difference between the western understanding of energy as a commodity to be exploited for gain and livelihood and the Sámi outlook of life force as an inherent power in creatures, individuals, and land. Tate Modern's past as a industrial facility is connected to this, as is what the Sámi see as environmental exploitation by Scandinavian states. While attempting to be standard bearers for clean sources, Nordic nations have locked horns with the Sámi over the building of turbine fields, hydroelectric dams, and digging operations on their native soil; the Sámi assert their human rights, ways of life, and traditions are at risk. "It's challenging being such a tiny group to protect your rights when the justifications are rooted in saving the world," Sara notes. "Resource exploitation has co-opted the discourse of environmentalism, but nonetheless it's just attempting to find better ways to continue habits of use."

Individual Struggles

Sara and her kin have themselves disagreed with the national administration over its tightening rules on herding. In 2016, Sara's sibling embarked on a series of finally failed lawsuits over the required reduction of his animals, apparently to stop excessive feeding. As a show of solidarity, Sara developed a four-year series of pieces named Pile O'Sápmi featuring a huge drape of 400 animal bones, which was exhibited at the 2017's show Documenta 14 and later obtained by the public gallery, where it resides in the entrance.

The Role of Art in Activism

Among the community, art appears the only sphere in which they can be heard by people of other nations. In 2022, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|