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Visitors to Tate Modern are accustomed to unexpected experiences in its expansive Turbine Hall. They've sunbathed under an man-made sun, descended down amusement rides, and observed automated sea creatures floating through the air. Yet this marks the first time they will be venturing themselves in the complex nose passages of a reindeer. The current creative installation for this cavernous space—designed by Native Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—invites patrons into a winding design based on the expanded inside of a reindeer's nose passages. Upon entering, they can stroll around or relax on skins, listening on headphones to Sámi elders telling narratives and knowledge.

Why the Nose?

Why choose the nasal structure? It could sound playful, but the artwork pays tribute to a obscure biological feat: scientists have found that in a fraction of a second, the reindeer's nose can warm the ambient air it breathes in by 80 degrees celsius, helping the animal to endure in extreme Arctic temperatures. Enlarging the nose to larger than human size, Sara explains, "produces a perception of insignificance that you as a human being are not dominant over nature." Sara is a former reporter, children's author, and environmental activist, who is from a reindeer-herding family in the Norwegian Arctic. "Possibly that fosters the potential to change your viewpoint or spark some humility," she states.

A Tribute to Traditional Ways

The labyrinthine installation is among various components in Sara's engaging exhibition celebrating the traditions, understanding, and philosophy of the Sámi, Europe's only Indigenous people. Semi-nomadic, the Sámi total roughly 100,000 people ranged across the Norwegian north, the Finnish Arctic, Sweden, and Russia's Kola Peninsula (an territory they call Sápmi). They have experienced persecution, forced assimilation, and suppression of their language by all four nations. With an emphasis on the reindeer, an animal at the heart of the Sámi mythology and origin tale, the art also spotlights the community's challenges associated with the climate crisis, land dispossession, and external control.

Symbolism in Elements

At the lengthy entry incline, there's a soaring, 26-metre sculpture of skins ensnared by utility lines. It represents a symbol for the governance and financial structures restricting the Sámi. Part pylon, part celestial ladder, this section of the artwork, called Goavve-, refers to the Sámi term for an severe climatic event, in which dense sheets of ice develop as varying weather liquefy and ice over the snow, trapping the reindeers' primary winter food, lichen. Goavvi is a outcome of climate change, which is happening up to much more rapidly in the Far North than elsewhere.

Previously, I visited Sara in the Norwegian far north during a goavvi winter and joined Sámi reindeer keepers on their Arctic vehicles in chilly conditions as they carried containers of supplementary feed on to the wind-scoured Arctic plains to distribute manually. The herd gathered round us, digging the icy ground in vain attempts for lichen-covered pieces. This costly and labour-intensive process is having a significant impact on reindeer husbandry—and on the animals' independence. Yet the alternative is death. As goavvi winters become routine, reindeer are dying—a number from starvation, others drowning after sinking in water bodies through prematurely melting ice. To some extent, the work is a tribute to them. "Through the stacking of materials, in a way I'm bringing the condition to London," says Sara.

Diverging Perspectives

This artwork also underscores the sharp contrast between the western view of electricity as a resource to be exploited for profit and existence and the Sámi philosophy of vitality as an natural essence in animals, individuals, and nature. The gallery's history as a fossil fuel plant is tied up in this, as is what the Sámi view as environmental exploitation by Scandinavian states. While attempting to be standard bearers for renewable energy, Scandinavian countries have disagreed with the Sámi over the building of wind energy projects, river barriers, and digging operations on their ancestral land; the Sámi argue their legal protections, incomes, and way of life are endangered. "It's challenging being such a tiny group to protect your rights when the reasons are rooted in saving the world," Sara observes. "Mining practices has appropriated the rhetoric of ecology, but nonetheless it's just attempting to find alternative ways to maintain patterns of expenditure."

Personal Struggles

The artist and her kin have personally disagreed with the Norwegian government over its ever-stricter policies on reindeer management. Previously, Sara's brother undertook a series of finally failed legal cases over the forced culling of his animals, supposedly to stop excessive feeding. To back him, Sara created a multi-year set of artworks titled Pile O'Sápmi comprising a huge drape of four hundred cranial remains, which was displayed at the the art exhibition Documenta 14 and later acquired by the national institution, where it resides in the entrance.

Creative Expression as Awareness

For numerous Indigenous people, art appears the exclusive sphere in which they can be listened to by the global community. In 2022, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|