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Guests to Tate Modern are accustomed to surprising experiences in its spacious Turbine Hall. They've basked under an simulated sun, glided down spiral slides, and seen robotic sea creatures floating through the air. But this marks the initial time they will be engaging themselves in the complex nasal chambers of a reindeer. The latest creative installation for this cavernous space—developed by Indigenous Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—encourages visitors into a labyrinthine structure inspired by the expanded interior of a reindeer's nasal airways. Inside, they can wander around or unwind on reindeer hides, tuning in on headphones to Sámi elders imparting narratives and wisdom.

Focus on the Nasal Passages

What's the focus on the nose? It might seem whimsical, but the artwork pays tribute to a rarely recognized scientific wonder: researchers have uncovered that in under a second, the reindeer's nose can warm the incoming air it breathes in by 80°C, enabling the animal to endure in harsh Arctic temperatures. Scaling the nose to larger than human size, Sara explains, "generates a perception of smallness that you as a human being are not in control over nature." She is a former journalist, children's author, and rights advocate, who comes from a pastoral family in the Norwegian Arctic. "Maybe that fosters the chance to alter your viewpoint or spark some humility," she states.

A Celebration to Indigenous Heritage

The maze-like structure is part of a features in Sara's engaging art project showcasing the heritage, knowledge, and beliefs of the Sámi, the continent's original inhabitants. Semi-nomadic, the Sámi total roughly 100,000 people ranged across the Norwegian north, Finland, the Swedish Lapland, and Russia's Kola Peninsula (an region they call Sápmi). They've experienced discrimination, cultural suppression, and eradication of their tongue by all four nations. By focusing on the reindeer, an animal at the heart of the Sámi cosmology and origin tale, the installation also spotlights the people's challenges relating to the climate crisis, land dispossession, and imperialism.

Metaphor in Components

On the long access slope, there's a towering, 26-metre structure of reindeer hides ensnared by power and light cables. It serves as a analogy for the governance and financial structures limiting the Sámi. Partly a utility pole, part heavenly staircase, this component of the exhibit, called Goavve-, points to the Sámi word for an harsh environmental condition, wherein dense layers of ice develop as varying conditions thaw and solidify again the snow, locking in the reindeers' main cold-season food, fungus. Goavvi is a result of planetary warming, which is taking place up to much more rapidly in the Polar region than globally.

Three years ago, I traveled to see Sara in the Norwegian far north during a goavvi winter and went with Sámi pastoralists on their motorized sleds in biting cold as they carried trailers of animal nutrition on to the barren tundra to distribute by hand. These animals gathered round us, pawing the slippery ground in vain for lichen-covered morsels. This resource-intensive and labour-intensive method is having a significant impact on animal rearing—and on the animals' natural survival. But the choice is death. When such conditions become routine, reindeer are succumbing—some from lack of food, others drowning after falling into water bodies through prematurely melting ice. To some extent, the work is a tribute to them. "Through the stacking of components, in a way I'm introducing the condition to London," says Sara.

Opposing Perspectives

The sculpture also emphasizes the clear difference between the western view of power as a resource to be harnessed for gain and survival and the Sámi worldview of vitality as an inherent power in creatures, humans, and land. Tate Modern's past as a coal and oil power station is connected to this, as is what the Sámi see as green colonialism by Nordic countries. In their efforts to be leaders for clean sources, these states have clashed with the Sámi over the building of wind energy projects, water power facilities, and digging operations on their native soil; the Sámi assert their human rights, livelihoods, and way of life are at risk. "It's hard being such a tiny group to defend yourself when the reasons are rooted in environmental protection," Sara comments. "Extractivism has adopted the rhetoric of ecology, but nonetheless it's just attempting to find more suitable ways to maintain habits of use."

Family Struggles

The artist and her kin have personally clashed with the Norwegian government over its increasingly stringent rules on herding. In 2016, Sara's sibling undertook a set of ultimately unsuccessful lawsuits over the mandatory slaughter of his herd, supposedly to stop vegetation depletion. To back him, Sara developed a four-year series of artworks titled Pile O'Sápmi comprising a colossal screen of four hundred animal bones, which was shown at the 2017's art exhibition Documenta 14 and later obtained by the public gallery, where it is displayed in the entrance.

The Role of Art in Advocacy

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