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Guests to Tate Modern are accustomed to unexpected displays in its vast Turbine Hall. They have basked under an artificial sun, slid down amusement rides, and observed AI-powered sea creatures drifting through the air. But this marks the inaugural time they will be venturing themselves in the complex nose passages of a reindeer. The current artist commission for this immense space—developed by Indigenous Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—invites visitors into a winding construction based on the scaled-up interior of a reindeer's nose passages. Inside, they can meander around or relax on skins, listening on headphones to tribal seniors imparting narratives and knowledge.

Why the Nose?

What's the focus on the nose? It may sound quirky, but the installation pays tribute to a obscure scientific wonder: scientists have uncovered that in under a second, the reindeer's nose can heat the surrounding air it inhales by 80°C, enabling the creature to thrive in inhospitable Arctic temperatures. Enlarging the nose to larger than human size, Sara notes, "generates a sense of insignificance that you as a individual are not superior over nature." The artist is a former reporter, children's author, and environmental activist, who is from a pastoral family in northern Norway. "Possibly that creates the chance to alter your outlook or evoke some humility," she states.

A Tribute to Sámi Culture

The winding structure is part of a elements in Sara's engaging art project honoring the heritage, knowledge, and philosophy of the Sámi, Europe's only Indigenous people. Semi-nomadic, the Sámi count roughly 100,000 people spread across the Norwegian north, Finland, Sweden, and Russia's Kola Peninsula (an area they call Sápmi). They have endured persecution, cultural suppression, and suppression of their language by all four states. Through highlighting the reindeer, an animal at the center of the Sámi belief system and origin tale, the installation also draws attention to the group's issues connected to the environmental emergency, land dispossession, and external control.

Metaphor in Elements

On the long access slope, there's a towering, eighty-five-foot formation of pelts entangled by electrical wires. It represents a metaphor for the governance and financial structures restricting the Sámi. Like an electrical tower, part celestial ladder, this component of the installation, titled Goavve-, refers to the Sámi word for an extreme weather phenomenon, wherein dense coatings of ice appear as changing temperatures melt and solidify again the snow, locking in the reindeers' primary winter food, fungus. The condition is a result of global heating, which is occurring up to much more rapidly in the Arctic than elsewhere.

Three years ago, I traveled to see Sara in a remote town during a severe cold period and accompanied Sámi herders on their Arctic vehicles in chilly conditions as they transported trailers of supplementary feed on to the barren tundra to dispense through labor. These animals surrounded round us, digging the frozen ground in futility for vegetative bits. This expensive and labour-intensive procedure is having a significant impact on reindeer husbandry—and on the animals' self-sufficiency. However the choice is death. As these icy periods become routine, reindeer are dying—a number from hunger, others drowning after sinking in streams through unstable frozen surfaces. In a sense, the art is a tribute to them. "By overlapping of elements, in a way I'm bringing the goavvi to London," says Sara.

Opposing Worldviews

This artwork also highlights the stark contrast between the western interpretation of power as a asset to be utilized for profit and livelihood and the Sámi outlook of energy as an innate power in creatures, people, and nature. Tate Modern's history as a coal and oil power station is tied up in this, as is what the Sámi view as eco-imperialism by Nordic countries. In their efforts to be standard bearers for sustainable power, Nordic nations have clashed with the Sámi over the construction of windfarms, river barriers, and extraction sites on their native soil; the Sámi assert their human rights, livelihoods, and culture are threatened. "It's hard being such a small minority to protect your rights when the justifications are rooted in global sustainability," Sara comments. "Mining practices has appropriated the language of environmentalism, but still it's just aiming to find alternative ways to maintain practices of consumption."

Personal Challenges

The artist and her kin have themselves disagreed with the Norwegian government over its ever-stricter rules on animal husbandry. Previously, Sara's brother undertook a sequence of ultimately unsuccessful lawsuits over the mandatory slaughter of his animals, ostensibly to stop excessive feeding. In support, Sara produced a multi-year collection of artworks titled Pile O'Sápmi including a massive screen of four hundred reindeer skulls, which was displayed at the the show Documenta 14 and later obtained by the public gallery, where it resides in the entryway.

Creative Expression as Advocacy

For numerous Indigenous people, visual expression is the only sphere in which they can be heard by the global community. Recently, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|