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Visitors to Tate Modern are familiar to unusual displays in its spacious Turbine Hall. They have relaxed under an simulated sun, descended down helter skelters, and seen automated jellyfish floating through the air. However this marks the first time they will be engaging themselves in the intricate nasal passages of a reindeer. The newest artist commission for this huge space—developed by Native Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—welcomes gallerygoers into a labyrinthine construction modeled after the expanded inside of a reindeer's nasal airways. Once inside, they can meander around or unwind on pelts, listening on headphones to tribal seniors sharing narratives and wisdom.

Focus on the Nasal Passages

Why choose the nasal structure? It could sound playful, but the installation honors a rarely recognized scientific wonder: experts have uncovered that in less than one second, the reindeer's nose can heat the incoming air it inhales by 80°C, helping the animal to endure in inhospitable Arctic climates. Enlarging the nose to larger than human size, Sara says, "creates a feeling of smallness that you as a human being are not dominant over nature." She is a former reporter, young adult author, and rights advocate, who hails from a pastoral family in the far north of Norway. "Perhaps that fosters the potential to shift your outlook or spark some humbleness," she continues.

An Homage to Indigenous Heritage

The maze-like design is one of several features in Sara's immersive art project honoring the traditions, knowledge, and philosophy of the Sámi, the sole native group in Europe. Semi-nomadic, the Sámi number approximately 100,000 people distributed across northern Norway, Finland, Sweden, and Russia's Kola Peninsula (an region they call Sápmi). They have experienced oppression, forced assimilation, and suppression of their language by all four nations. By focusing on the reindeer, an creature at the center of the Sámi cosmology and creation story, the work also highlights the community's issues connected to the global warming, property rights, and external control.

Metaphor in Elements

On the lengthy entrance ramp, there's a towering, eighty-five-foot sculpture of pelts entangled by utility lines. It represents a metaphor for the political and economic systems limiting the Sámi. Like an electrical tower, part spiritual ascent, this part of the installation, named Goavve-, relates to the Sámi word for an harsh environmental condition, wherein solid layers of ice form as varying conditions thaw and refreeze the snow, locking in the reindeers' key winter sustenance, fungus. Goavvi is a result of planetary warming, which is happening up to at an accelerated rate in the Far North than globally.

Previously, I visited Sara in the Norwegian far north during a icy season and went with Sámi herders on their snowmobiles in biting cold as they hauled containers of supplementary feed on to the wind-scoured frozen landscape to provide manually. The reindeer surrounded round us, scratching the icy ground in vain for vegetative bits. This resource-intensive and labour-intensive method is having a significant impact on reindeer husbandry—and on the animals' natural survival. Yet the other option is starvation. As goavvi winters become frequent, reindeer are perishing—some from starvation, others suffocating after plunging into lakes and rivers through unstable frozen surfaces. To some extent, the installation is a tribute to them. "Through the stacking of components, in a way I'm bringing the phenomenon to London," says Sara.

Diverging Belief Systems

The installation also underscores the sharp divergence between the modern understanding of electricity as a resource to be utilized for economic benefit and existence and the Sámi outlook of vitality as an inherent life force in animals, people, and land. The gallery's past as a coal and oil power station is connected to this, as is what the Sámi consider eco-imperialism by Scandinavian states. While attempting to be standard bearers for renewable energy, Nordic nations have clashed with the Sámi over the development of turbine fields, hydroelectric dams, and digging operations on their traditional territory; the Sámi contend their legal protections, ways of life, and traditions are endangered. "It's very difficult being such a limited population to stand your ground when the arguments are based on saving the world," Sara notes. "Extractivism has appropriated the language of sustainability, but yet it's just aiming to find more suitable ways to continue practices of expenditure."

Individual Challenges

The artist and her family have personally clashed with the state authorities over its tightening regulations on reindeer management. A few years ago, Sara's brother undertook a set of finally failed lawsuits over the forced culling of his animals, ostensibly to stop overgrazing. As a show of solidarity, Sara produced a multi-year set of pieces titled Pile O'Sápmi including a huge drape of numerous reindeer skulls, which was exhibited at the 2017's art exhibition Documenta 14 and later purchased by the public gallery, where it hangs in the entrance.

Creative Expression as Advocacy

For many Sámi, creative work seems the sole domain in which they can be understood by the global community. In 2022, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|