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Attendees to Tate Modern are used to unexpected displays in its expansive Turbine Hall. They have relaxed under an artificial sun, glided down helter skelters, and seen AI-powered sea creatures drifting through the air. However this marks the first time they will be engaging themselves in the complex nose chambers of a reindeer. The current artist commission for this cavernous space—designed by Indigenous Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—encourages gallerygoers into a winding structure inspired by the enlarged interior of a reindeer's nasal airways. Upon entering, they can meander around or unwind on reindeer hides, tuning in on headphones to tribal seniors sharing narratives and insights.

Why the Nose?

Why choose the nasal structure? It could sound whimsical, but the artwork celebrates a little-known scientific wonder: scientists have uncovered that in less than one second, the reindeer's nose can warm the incoming air it inhales by eighty degrees, helping the animal to thrive in extreme Arctic climates. Expanding the nose to human-scale dimensions, Sara says, "creates a feeling of inferiority that you as a individual are not in control over nature." She is a former writer, children's author, and land defender, who comes from a pastoral family in the Norwegian Arctic. "Maybe that generates the chance to alter your viewpoint or trigger some modesty," she continues.

An Homage to Traditional Ways

The labyrinthine installation is among various elements in Sara's immersive exhibition celebrating the heritage, knowledge, and beliefs of the Sámi, Europe's only Indigenous people. Semi-nomadic, the Sámi number about 100,000 people spread across northern Norway, the Finnish Arctic, the Swedish Lapland, and the Kola region (an territory they call Sápmi). They have faced discrimination, cultural suppression, and eradication of their language by all four nations. By focusing on the reindeer, an creature at the heart of the Sámi mythology and founding narrative, the installation also highlights the group's challenges relating to the environmental emergency, property rights, and colonialism.

Metaphor in Components

On the long entrance ramp, there's a towering, 26-meter sculpture of reindeer hides entangled by utility lines. It represents a metaphor for the political and economic systems constraining the Sámi. Part pylon, part spiritual ascent, this section of the artwork, titled Goavve-, relates to the Sámi word for an severe climatic event, in which solid sheets of ice form as fluctuating weather melt and ice over the snow, trapping the reindeers' key cold-season sustenance, moss. This phenomenon is a outcome of climate change, which is occurring up to four times faster 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 motorized sleds in chilly conditions as they transported containers of animal nutrition on to the exposed frozen landscape to distribute through labor. The reindeer surrounded round us, scratching the frozen ground in vain for mossy morsels. This expensive and labour-intensive procedure is having a significant impact on reindeer husbandry—and on the animals' natural survival. Yet the other option is starvation. When such conditions become frequent, reindeer are perishing—some from hunger, others drowning after plunging into water bodies through thinning ice sheets. In a sense, the work is a monument to them. "By overlapping of materials, in a way I'm bringing the condition to London," says Sara.

Opposing Worldviews

The installation also highlights the stark difference between the industrial understanding of energy as a commodity to be exploited for economic benefit and existence and the Sámi philosophy of life force as an innate power in creatures, humans, and nature. Tate Modern's past as a fossil fuel plant is connected to this, as is what the Sámi view as green colonialism by Scandinavian states. In their efforts to be standard bearers for clean sources, these states have clashed with the Sámi over the development of wind energy projects, hydroelectric dams, and extraction sites on their traditional territory; the Sámi contend their fundamental freedoms, incomes, and way of life are at risk. "It's very difficult being such a limited population to stand your ground when the justifications are rooted in global sustainability," Sara notes. "Resource exploitation has adopted the language of ecology, but still it's just aiming to find more suitable ways to continue patterns of consumption."

Individual Conflicts

The artist and her family have personally conflicted with the national administration over its ever-stricter policies on reindeer management. In 2016, Sara's sibling embarked on a series of finally failed court actions over the forced culling of his animals, ostensibly to stop overgrazing. To back him, Sara developed a multi-year collection of pieces named Pile O'Sápmi comprising a massive curtain of 400 cranial remains, which was exhibited at the the show Documenta 14 and later obtained by the public gallery, where it resides in the lobby.

Art as Activism

For many Sámi, creative work seems the sole domain in which they can be listened to by people of other nations. Recently, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|