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Attendees to Tate Modern are used to unusual displays in its expansive Turbine Hall. They have basked under an simulated sun, slid down helter skelters, and seen robotic jellyfish drifting through the air. However this marks the initial time they will be immersing themselves in the complex nose cavities of a reindeer. The latest artistic project for this huge space—developed by Native Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—invites patrons into a labyrinthine construction inspired by the enlarged inside of a reindeer's nasal passages. Inside, they can meander around or unwind on skins, listening on headphones to Sámi elders imparting narratives and insights.

The Significance of the Nose

Why choose the nasal structure? It could seem quirky, but the artwork pays tribute to a rarely recognized biological feat: experts have uncovered that in under a second, the reindeer's nose can warm the surrounding air it takes in by 80°C, allowing the animal to thrive in inhospitable Arctic climates. Enlarging the nose to human-scale dimensions, Sara notes, "produces a sense of insignificance that you as a human being are not superior over nature." The artist is a ex- journalist, children's author, and rights advocate, who hails from a herding family in the far north of Norway. "Possibly that generates the possibility to shift your outlook or trigger some humbleness," she states.

An Homage to Traditional Ways

The labyrinthine design is one of several components in Sara's absorbing commission celebrating the culture, knowledge, and philosophy of the Sámi, Europe's only Indigenous people. Partially migratory, the Sámi total about 100,000 people spread across the Norwegian north, the Finnish Arctic, Sweden, and the Russian Arctic (an territory they call Sápmi). They have faced oppression, forced assimilation, and repression of their tongue by all four countries. With an emphasis on the reindeer, an animal at the heart of the Sámi mythology and founding narrative, the installation also spotlights the group's struggles relating to the global warming, land dispossession, and colonialism.

Symbolism in Components

On the extended entry ramp, there's a towering, eighty-five-foot sculpture of reindeer hides entangled by power and light cables. It represents a symbol for the governance and financial structures limiting the Sámi. Part pylon, part celestial ladder, this part of the artwork, titled Goavve-, refers to the Sámi term for an harsh environmental condition, wherein thick layers of ice form as fluctuating weather liquefy and solidify again the snow, trapping the reindeers' main winter food, fungus. Goavvi is a consequence of climate change, which is taking place up to four times faster in the Far North than elsewhere.

Previously, I met with Sara in Guovdageaidnu during a icy season and accompanied Sámi pastoralists on their snowmobiles in freezing temperatures as they carried trailers of food pellets on to the wind-scoured Arctic plains to distribute by hand. The herd crowded round us, digging the icy ground in vain attempts for lichen-covered morsels. This expensive and demanding method is having a drastic influence on reindeer husbandry—and on the animals' independence. However the alternative is death. As goavvi winters become commonplace, reindeer are dying—a number from hunger, others drowning after falling into streams through unstable frozen surfaces. To some extent, the installation is a tribute to them. "By overlapping of components, in a way I'm introducing the goavvi to London," says Sara.

Contrasting Perspectives

The sculpture also underscores the clear divergence between the western view of electricity as a asset to be exploited for economic benefit and existence and the Sámi worldview of life force as an inherent power in creatures, people, and nature. The gallery's history as a fossil fuel plant is connected to this, as is what the Sámi view as environmental exploitation by Scandinavian states. As they strive to be standard bearers for clean sources, these states have disagreed with the Sámi over the construction of windfarms, river barriers, and mines on their ancestral land; the Sámi argue their legal protections, incomes, and culture are threatened. "It's very difficult being such a tiny group to protect your rights when the arguments are rooted in saving the world," Sara notes. "Extractivism has appropriated the discourse of environmentalism, but nonetheless it's just striving to find more suitable ways to continue habits of consumption."

Family Struggles

Sara and her relatives have themselves disagreed with the Norwegian government over its increasingly stringent rules on herding. A few years ago, Sara's brother initiated a sequence of ultimately unsuccessful court actions over the mandatory slaughter of his livestock, apparently to stop excessive feeding. To back him, Sara produced a multi-year set of pieces named Pile O'Sápmi comprising a colossal curtain of numerous reindeer skulls, 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 is the only realm in which they can be understood by the global community. In 2022, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|