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Guests to Tate Modern are used to unexpected encounters in its spacious Turbine Hall. They have sunbathed under an artificial sun, descended down helter skelters, and witnessed AI-powered sea creatures floating through the air. But this marks the initial time they will be venturing themselves in the complex nose cavities of a reindeer. The newest artistic project for this huge space—designed by Indigenous Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—invites patrons into a labyrinthine structure inspired by the enlarged interior of a reindeer's nose passages. Once inside, they can meander around or unwind on pelts, listening on earphones to tribal seniors telling narratives and knowledge.

The Significance of the Nose

Why the nose? It could appear quirky, but the installation honors a little-known biological feat: researchers have uncovered that in a fraction of a second, the reindeer's nose can heat the surrounding air it breathes in by 80 degrees celsius, allowing the creature to endure in extreme Arctic conditions. Expanding the nose to human-scale dimensions, Sara explains, "generates a feeling of insignificance that you as a individual are not superior over nature." Sara is a former reporter, writer for kids, and land defender, who comes from a herding family in northern Norway. "Maybe that generates the possibility to shift your viewpoint or evoke some humbleness," she states.

An Homage to Sámi Culture

The labyrinthine installation is among various components in Sara's immersive art project showcasing the heritage, science, and philosophy of the Sámi, Europe's only Indigenous people. Partially migratory, the Sámi count approximately 100,000 people distributed across the Norwegian north, the Finnish Arctic, Sweden, and the Russian Arctic (an region they call Sápmi). They have endured oppression, integration policies, and eradication of their language by all four countries. With an emphasis on the reindeer, an creature at the heart of the Sámi mythology and founding narrative, the work also highlights the group's issues associated with the environmental emergency, property rights, and external control.

Metaphor in Components

On the long entrance incline, there's a towering, 26-metre sculpture of pelts ensnared by utility lines. It represents a analogy for the governance and financial structures restricting the Sámi. Partly a utility pole, part celestial ladder, this section of the installation, named Goavve-, refers to the Sámi word for an severe climatic event, wherein thick layers of ice form as varying temperatures thaw and refreeze the snow, trapping the reindeers' key winter sustenance, moss. The condition is a outcome of planetary warming, which is taking place up to much more rapidly in the Arctic than elsewhere.

Previously, I visited Sara in a remote town during a severe cold period and accompanied Sámi reindeer keepers on their snowmobiles in biting cold as they hauled trailers of food pellets on to the exposed frozen landscape to distribute by hand. The reindeer surrounded round us, pawing the slippery ground in futility for vegetative morsels. This resource-intensive and demanding procedure is having a severe influence on herding practices—and on the animals' independence. But the other option is death. As these icy periods become commonplace, reindeer are dying—some from lack of food, others submerging after sinking in water bodies through unstable frozen surfaces. In a sense, the installation is a memorial to them. "With the layering of components, in a way I'm transporting the phenomenon to London," says Sara.

Opposing Perspectives

This artwork also highlights the clear contrast between the western interpretation of power as a commodity to be exploited for economic benefit and livelihood and the Sámi outlook of energy as an inherent life force in animals, individuals, and the environment. Tate Modern's history as a coal and oil power station is linked with this, as is what the Sámi view as green colonialism by Nordic countries. While attempting to be exemplars for sustainable power, Nordic nations have disagreed with the Sámi over the building of wind energy projects, river barriers, and mines on their traditional territory; the Sámi contend their legal protections, incomes, and way of life are threatened. "It's very difficult being such a tiny group to stand your ground when the justifications are grounded in saving the world," Sara observes. "Mining practices has appropriated the discourse of ecology, but yet it's just striving to find more suitable ways to maintain patterns of use."

Family Challenges

The artist and her relatives have personally conflicted with the Norwegian government over its increasingly stringent rules on herding. In 2016, Sara's sibling initiated a sequence of unsuccessful lawsuits over the mandatory slaughter of his livestock, apparently to stop vegetation depletion. To back him, Sara developed a multi-year set of artworks titled Pile O'Sápmi featuring a colossal curtain of four hundred animal bones, which was exhibited at the 2017 event Documenta 14 and later obtained by the national institution, where it is displayed in the entrance.

Creative Expression as Awareness

For numerous Indigenous people, visual expression is the only domain in which they can be heard by the global community. In 2022, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|