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Attendees to Tate Modern are familiar to surprising encounters in its expansive Turbine Hall. They have sunbathed under an artificial sun, glided down spiral slides, and witnessed AI-powered jellyfish floating through the air. However this marks the initial time they will be engaging themselves in the detailed nose chambers of a reindeer. The latest creative installation for this cavernous space—designed by Native Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—encourages patrons into a maze-like construction inspired by the enlarged inside of a reindeer's nasal airways. Once inside, they can stroll around or relax on pelts, tuning in on headphones to Sámi elders telling tales and knowledge.

Focus on the Nasal Passages

What's the focus on the nose? It might appear playful, but the installation pays tribute to a obscure biological feat: experts have discovered that in under a second, the reindeer's nose can warm the incoming air it breathes in by eighty degrees, helping the creature to thrive in harsh Arctic temperatures. Scaling the nose to bigger than a person, Sara explains, "creates a feeling of smallness that you as a individual are not dominant over nature." She is a ex- reporter, young adult author, and rights advocate, who is from a pastoral family in the far north of Norway. "Maybe that creates the possibility to change your outlook or spark some humility," she continues.

A Celebration to Sámi Culture

The maze-like installation is one of several features in Sara's engaging exhibition showcasing the traditions, knowledge, and worldview of the Sámi, the sole native group in Europe. Traditionally mobile, the Sámi number about 100,000 people distributed across northern Norway, Finland, the Swedish Lapland, and the Russian Arctic (an territory they call Sápmi). They've endured persecution, integration policies, and repression of their tongue by all four nations. Through highlighting the reindeer, an animal at the core of the Sámi cosmology and creation story, the work also spotlights the group's challenges relating to the global warming, land dispossession, and imperialism.

Symbolism in Elements

At the long entry slope, there's a towering, eighty-five-foot structure of pelts ensnared by power and light cables. It serves as a metaphor for the societal frameworks limiting the Sámi. Part pylon, part celestial ladder, this section of the artwork, named Goavve-, refers to the Sámi word for an severe climatic event, in which dense coatings of ice develop as fluctuating weather thaw and refreeze the snow, encasing the reindeers' primary cold-season sustenance, lichen. This phenomenon is a consequence of global heating, which is happening up to four times faster in the Far North than in other regions.

A few years back, I visited Sara in the Norwegian far north during a goavvi winter and went with Sámi reindeer keepers on their snowmobiles in biting cold as they carried carts of animal nutrition on to the exposed tundra to distribute through labor. These animals surrounded round us, digging the frozen ground in vain attempts for lichen-covered morsels. This expensive and labour-intensive procedure is having a drastic influence on reindeer husbandry—and on the animals' self-sufficiency. But the alternative is malnutrition. When such conditions become frequent, reindeer are succumbing—some from lack of food, others submerging after plunging into water bodies through unstable frozen surfaces. On one level, the installation is a tribute to them. "With the layering of elements, in a way I'm introducing the phenomenon to London," says Sara.

Opposing Worldviews

The sculpture also highlights the sharp contrast between the western understanding of power as a asset to be utilized for gain and livelihood and the Sámi philosophy of vitality as an natural power in animals, humans, and land. This venue's legacy as a industrial facility is connected to this, as is what the Sámi consider eco-imperialism by Scandinavian states. As they strive to be leaders for clean sources, these states have clashed with the Sámi over the construction of windfarms, hydroelectric dams, and digging operations on their ancestral land; the Sámi argue their human rights, incomes, and traditions are at risk. "It's very difficult being such a tiny group to stand your ground when the justifications are rooted in environmental protection," Sara observes. "Resource exploitation has co-opted the language of ecology, but yet it's just striving to find better ways to continue habits of consumption."

Individual Struggles

The artist and her relatives have themselves clashed with the Norwegian government over its ever-stricter policies on animal husbandry. In 2016, Sara's sibling embarked on a sequence of ultimately unsuccessful legal cases over the required reduction of his herd, supposedly to stop excessive feeding. To back him, Sara produced a extended collection of pieces called Pile O'Sápmi including a massive drape of four hundred cranial remains, which was shown at the 2017's art exhibition Documenta 14 and later acquired by the public gallery, where it hangs in the entrance.

The Role of Art in Advocacy

For many Sámi, art appears the only realm in which they can be heard by outsiders. In 2022, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|