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Attendees to Tate Modern are used to unexpected encounters in its expansive Turbine Hall. They have basked under an artificial sun, glided down spiral slides, and seen AI-powered sea creatures drifting through the air. Yet this marks the initial time they will be engaging themselves in the intricate nose passages of a reindeer. The latest artistic project for this huge space—created by Native Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—welcomes visitors into a maze-like structure based on the enlarged inside of a reindeer's nasal airways. Inside, they can wander around or chill out on skins, tuning in on headphones to tribal seniors telling stories and knowledge.

Focus on the Nasal Passages

Why the nose? It may sound whimsical, but the installation pays tribute to a rarely recognized scientific wonder: researchers have uncovered that in a fraction of a second, the reindeer's nose can warm the surrounding air it breathes in by eighty degrees, helping the creature to survive in inhospitable Arctic temperatures. Enlarging the nose to bigger than a person, Sara explains, "creates a perception of inferiority that you as a human being are not in control over nature." She is a former journalist, writer for kids, and environmental activist, who comes from a herding family in northern Norway. "Possibly that creates the chance to shift your viewpoint or evoke some humility," she states.

An Homage to Indigenous Heritage

The maze-like design is among various components in Sara's absorbing exhibition celebrating the culture, understanding, and beliefs of the Sámi, the continent's original inhabitants. Partially migratory, the Sámi count approximately 100,000 people ranged across northern Norway, Finland, Sweden, and the Russian Arctic (an region they call Sápmi). They've experienced oppression, integration policies, and eradication of their tongue by all four countries. With an emphasis on the reindeer, an creature at the core of the Sámi mythology and origin tale, the art also highlights the community's issues connected to the environmental emergency, property rights, and imperialism.

Metaphor in Components

At the long entry ramp, there's a looming, 26-meter formation of skins trapped by electrical wires. It can be read as a analogy for the governance and financial structures constraining the Sámi. Partly a utility pole, part spiritual ascent, this section of the installation, called Goavve-, relates to the Sámi word for an harsh environmental condition, in which dense coatings of ice form as fluctuating weather liquefy and ice over the snow, locking in the reindeers' main winter nourishment, fungus. The condition is a consequence of global heating, which is happening up to much more rapidly in the Far North than globally.

Previously, I visited Sara in the Norwegian far north during a goavvi winter and accompanied Sámi herders on their snowmobiles in chilly conditions as they carried trailers of food pellets on to the wind-scoured frozen landscape to distribute by hand. The herd crowded round us, pawing the icy ground in vain for lichen-covered pieces. This expensive and laborious method is having a drastic effect on herding practices—and on the animals' natural survival. But the other option is starvation. As goavvi winters become frequent, reindeer are dying—a number from starvation, others drowning after plunging into streams through unstable frozen surfaces. In a sense, the work is a tribute to them. "By overlapping of materials, in a way I'm transporting the phenomenon to London," says Sara.

Opposing Perspectives

The sculpture also underscores the stark contrast between the western understanding of energy as a asset to be utilized for gain and livelihood and the Sámi philosophy of energy as an innate essence in animals, humans, and land. The gallery's past as a industrial facility is connected to this, as is what the Sámi consider environmental exploitation by regional governments. In their efforts to be leaders for renewable energy, Scandinavian countries have clashed with the Sámi over the construction of windfarms, hydroelectric dams, and extraction sites on their traditional territory; the Sámi argue their fundamental freedoms, livelihoods, and culture are threatened. "It's challenging being such a limited population to stand your ground when the reasons are grounded in global sustainability," Sara observes. "Mining practices has adopted the language of environmentalism, but yet it's just striving to find alternative ways to continue habits of consumption."

Individual Conflicts

Sara and her relatives have personally disagreed with the national administration over its ever-stricter rules on animal husbandry. Previously, Sara's brother undertook a set of finally failed legal cases over the mandatory slaughter of his herd, supposedly to stop excessive feeding. In support, Sara developed a four-year collection of creations named Pile O'Sápmi comprising a massive screen of four hundred cranial remains, which was displayed at the 2017 art exhibition Documenta 14 and later obtained by the National Museum of Oslo, where it resides in the entrance.

Art as Advocacy

Among the community, visual expression is the exclusive realm in which they can be listened to by people of other nations. Two years ago, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|