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Visitors to Tate Modern are used to unusual experiences in its expansive Turbine Hall. They have basked under an man-made sun, glided down amusement rides, and witnessed robotic sea creatures drifting through the air. But this marks the inaugural time they will be engaging themselves in the detailed nasal chambers of a reindeer. The newest artist commission for this immense space—designed by Indigenous Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—invites gallerygoers into a winding construction inspired by the enlarged interior of a reindeer's nasal airways. Upon entering, they can stroll around or unwind on pelts, tuning in on headphones to tribal seniors telling narratives and wisdom.

The Significance of the Nose

What's the focus on the nose? It may sound whimsical, but the exhibit pays tribute to a obscure scientific wonder: experts have found that in less than one second, the reindeer's nose can heat the ambient air it breathes in by 80°C, allowing the creature to thrive in harsh Arctic temperatures. Scaling the nose to larger than human size, Sara explains, "produces a feeling of smallness that you as a person are not superior over nature." She is a former writer, children's author, and land defender, who hails from a pastoral family in northern Norway. "Maybe that generates the chance to change your viewpoint or trigger some modesty," she adds.

A Tribute to Sámi Culture

The winding installation is part of a elements in Sara's engaging art project showcasing the heritage, science, and philosophy of the Sámi, Europe's only Indigenous people. Partially migratory, the Sámi total about 100,000 people spread across northern Norway, the Finnish Arctic, the Swedish Lapland, and the Kola region (an region they call Sápmi). They've faced discrimination, integration policies, and eradication of their tongue by all four states. By focusing on the reindeer, an animal at the core of the Sámi cosmology and founding narrative, the art also highlights the community's struggles relating to the global warming, loss of territory, and colonialism.

Symbolism in Materials

On the extended entrance slope, there's a soaring, 26-metre sculpture of pelts entangled by electrical wires. It can be read as a symbol for the governance and financial structures limiting the Sámi. Part pylon, part spiritual ascent, this part of the artwork, called Goavve-, points to the Sámi term for an extreme weather phenomenon, in which solid coatings of ice develop as fluctuating temperatures thaw and solidify again the snow, trapping the reindeers' key winter nourishment, moss. Goavvi is a outcome of global heating, which is occurring up to four times faster in the Far North than in other regions.

Three years ago, I visited Sara in a remote town during a icy season and went with Sámi herders on their snowmobiles in chilly conditions as they carried trailers of animal nutrition on to the exposed tundra to dispense manually. These animals surrounded round us, digging the icy ground in vain attempts for vegetative morsels. This costly and demanding process is having a drastic effect on reindeer husbandry—and on the animals' self-sufficiency. But the other option is starvation. As these icy periods become frequent, reindeer are dying—a number from lack of food, others suffocating after plunging into streams through thinning ice sheets. To some extent, the art is a memorial to them. "By overlapping of components, in a way I'm transporting the phenomenon to London," says Sara.

Opposing Perspectives

The sculpture also emphasizes the stark contrast between the western interpretation of energy as a resource to be exploited for gain and livelihood and the Sámi worldview of vitality as an inherent essence in animals, individuals, and nature. Tate Modern's legacy as a coal and oil power station is connected to this, as is what the Sámi consider eco-imperialism by Nordic countries. While attempting to be exemplars for sustainable power, Scandinavian countries have locked horns with the Sámi over the development of wind energy projects, river barriers, and mines on their ancestral land; the Sámi assert their human rights, ways of life, and traditions are threatened. "It's very difficult being such a small minority to protect your rights when the justifications are rooted in saving the world," Sara observes. "Resource exploitation has appropriated the language of ecology, but still it's just aiming to find more suitable ways to persist in practices of use."

Individual Struggles

She and her family have themselves clashed with the Norwegian government over its tightening policies on reindeer management. In 2016, Sara's sibling initiated a sequence of finally failed legal cases over the required reduction of his herd, apparently to stop overgrazing. In support, Sara created a multi-year series of creations called Pile O'Sápmi including a massive drape of 400 reindeer skulls, which was displayed at the 2017 art exhibition Documenta 14 and later obtained by the public gallery, where it hangs in the lobby.

Creative Expression as Activism

For many Sámi, visual expression seems the exclusive sphere in which they can be heard by outsiders. In 2022, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|