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Visitors to Tate Modern are accustomed to surprising encounters in its vast Turbine Hall. They have relaxed under an artificial sun, descended down helter skelters, and witnessed automated jellyfish hovering through the air. However this marks the inaugural time they will be immersing themselves in the complex nasal passages of a reindeer. The newest creative installation for this immense space—designed by Indigenous Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—invites gallerygoers into a labyrinthine structure modeled after the scaled-up interior of a reindeer's nose cavities. Inside, they can stroll around or relax on skins, listening on earphones to community leaders sharing stories and insights.

Focus on the Nasal Passages

Why choose the nasal structure? It might seem quirky, but the installation honors a rarely recognized biological feat: researchers have found that in less than one second, the reindeer's nose can raise the temperature of the incoming air it breathes in by 80 degrees celsius, enabling the creature to thrive in harsh Arctic conditions. Expanding the nose to larger than human size, Sara explains, "produces a feeling of smallness that you as a human being are not superior over nature." The artist is a ex- journalist, children's author, and land defender, who comes from a pastoral family in northern Norway. "Possibly that generates the potential to change your outlook or evoke some humility," she states.

An Homage to Sámi Culture

The labyrinthine structure is one of several elements in Sara's immersive exhibition showcasing the heritage, understanding, and philosophy of the Sámi, Europe's only Indigenous people. Partially migratory, the Sámi number roughly 100,000 people spread across the Norwegian north, the Finnish Arctic, Sweden, and Russia's Kola Peninsula (an territory they call Sápmi). They have faced persecution, cultural suppression, and repression of their tongue by all four states. By focusing on the reindeer, an animal at the core of the Sámi cosmology and origin tale, the art also highlights the group's struggles associated with the global warming, loss of territory, and imperialism.

Meaning in Elements

Along the extended entrance incline, there's a looming, eighty-five-foot structure of skins entangled by electrical wires. It can be read as a analogy for the political and economic systems constraining the Sámi. Part pylon, part celestial ladder, this component of the exhibit, named Goavve-, relates to the Sámi name for an harsh environmental condition, in which dense coatings of ice form as changing conditions liquefy and solidify again the snow, encasing the reindeers' key cold-season food, moss. The condition is a consequence of climate change, which is taking place up to four times faster in the Far North than in other regions.

Three years ago, I traveled to see Sara in the Norwegian far north during a icy season and joined Sámi reindeer keepers on their snowmobiles in chilly conditions as they transported carts of supplementary feed on to the wind-scoured tundra to dispense manually. The reindeer crowded round us, pawing the slippery ground in vain attempts for vegetative pieces. This resource-intensive and laborious procedure is having a significant impact on animal rearing—and on the animals' self-sufficiency. But the alternative is starvation. As goavvi winters become commonplace, reindeer are succumbing—a number from lack of food, others submerging after sinking in lakes and rivers through thinning ice sheets. On one level, the art is a monument to them. "With the layering of materials, in a way I'm bringing the phenomenon to London," says Sara.

Diverging Belief Systems

The installation also underscores the clear divergence between the western interpretation of electricity as a asset to be exploited for gain and livelihood and the Sámi philosophy of vitality as an innate power in creatures, people, and nature. This venue's history as a fossil fuel plant is tied up in this, as is what the Sámi view as green colonialism by regional governments. While attempting to be exemplars for clean sources, Nordic nations have disagreed with the Sámi over the building of wind energy projects, water power facilities, and mines on their traditional territory; the Sámi argue their legal protections, ways of life, and way of life are at risk. "It's challenging being such a tiny group to defend yourself when the reasons are based on saving the world," Sara comments. "Resource exploitation has co-opted the language of sustainability, but yet it's just attempting to find alternative ways to continue habits of expenditure."

Personal Struggles

She and her kin have themselves disagreed with the national administration over its tightening rules on herding. A few years ago, Sara's sibling embarked on a series of ultimately unsuccessful court actions over the required reduction of his herd, ostensibly to stop excessive feeding. As a show of solidarity, Sara created a multi-year set of creations named Pile O'Sápmi including a huge drape of numerous cranial remains, which was shown at the 2017 art exhibition Documenta 14 and later obtained by the public gallery, where it hangs in the entrance.

Creative Expression as Advocacy

For numerous Indigenous people, visual expression appears the sole domain in which they can be listened to by outsiders. In 2022, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|