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Attendees to Tate Modern are accustomed to surprising encounters in its spacious Turbine Hall. They have relaxed under an artificial sun, descended down amusement rides, and witnessed automated jellyfish drifting through the air. Yet this marks the inaugural time they will be immersing themselves in the detailed nose passages of a reindeer. The newest artistic project for this cavernous space—created by Indigenous Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—invites visitors into a maze-like design modeled after the enlarged inside of a reindeer's nose passages. Once inside, they can wander around or chill out on skins, tuning in on headphones to tribal seniors telling narratives and knowledge.

Focus on the Nasal Passages

What's the focus on the nose? It may sound whimsical, but the installation pays tribute to a obscure biological feat: experts have found that in under a second, the reindeer's nose can heat the surrounding air it breathes in by 80°C, enabling the creature to survive in harsh Arctic temperatures. Scaling the nose to bigger than a person, Sara notes, "creates a perception of insignificance that you as a human being are not superior over nature." She is a ex- journalist, writer for kids, and environmental activist, who hails from a pastoral family in the far north of Norway. "Perhaps that fosters the chance to alter your viewpoint or trigger some modesty," she states.

A Celebration to Traditional Ways

The winding installation is among various components in Sara's absorbing commission honoring the heritage, knowledge, and worldview of the Sámi, Europe's only Indigenous people. Partially migratory, the Sámi number roughly 100,000 people spread across northern Norway, Finland, Sweden, and the Russian Arctic (an area they call Sápmi). They've experienced discrimination, cultural suppression, and repression of their language by all four nations. Through highlighting the reindeer, an animal at the heart of the Sámi cosmology and creation story, the work also spotlights the community's issues connected to the climate crisis, land dispossession, and colonialism.

Meaning in Materials

At the long entry incline, there's a towering, 26-meter formation of skins entangled by power and light cables. It can be read as a metaphor for the political and economic systems restricting the Sámi. Part pylon, part heavenly staircase, this part of the artwork, called Goavve-, points to the Sámi word for an severe climatic event, whereby thick sheets of ice develop as changing conditions liquefy and refreeze the snow, encasing the reindeers' primary winter sustenance, moss. This phenomenon is a outcome of climate change, which is happening up to much more rapidly in the Far North than in other regions.

Three years ago, I traveled to see Sara in Guovdageaidnu during a icy season and accompanied Sámi herders on their Arctic vehicles in chilly conditions as they carried containers of supplementary feed on to the exposed tundra to dispense manually. The herd gathered round us, scratching the slippery ground in vain for mossy pieces. This costly and laborious procedure is having a drastic influence on reindeer husbandry—and on the animals' self-sufficiency. However the alternative is death. When such conditions become routine, reindeer are dying—a number from starvation, others submerging after sinking in water bodies through unstable frozen surfaces. To some extent, the installation is a memorial to them. "With the layering of components, in a way I'm introducing the goavvi to London," says Sara.

Opposing Worldviews

The sculpture also highlights the clear divergence between the western understanding of electricity as a asset to be harnessed for profit and existence and the Sámi outlook of vitality as an natural life force in creatures, people, and nature. This venue's legacy as a industrial facility is linked with this, as is what the Sámi see as eco-imperialism by regional governments. While attempting to be standard bearers for clean sources, Nordic nations have disagreed with the Sámi over the construction of turbine fields, river barriers, and digging operations on their native soil; the Sámi assert their legal protections, incomes, and traditions are at risk. "It's very difficult being such a small minority to protect your rights when the reasons are grounded in saving the world," Sara comments. "Resource exploitation has co-opted the discourse of ecology, but still it's just striving to find alternative ways to persist in habits of consumption."

Individual Struggles

Sara and her family have themselves conflicted with the state authorities over its ever-stricter policies on herding. Previously, Sara's brother undertook a sequence of ultimately unsuccessful legal cases over the mandatory slaughter of his herd, apparently to stop overgrazing. In support, Sara created a four-year collection of pieces called Pile O'Sápmi including a massive drape of 400 animal bones, which was shown at the 2017 event Documenta 14 and later obtained by the National Museum of Oslo, where it is displayed in the lobby.

Creative Expression as Awareness

For numerous Indigenous people, creative work seems the sole domain in which they can be listened to by outsiders. In 2022, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|