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Visitors to Tate Modern are familiar to unexpected encounters in its spacious Turbine Hall. They have basked under an man-made sun, slid down spiral slides, and seen AI-powered jellyfish floating through the air. However this marks the inaugural time they will be engaging themselves in the detailed nose chambers of a reindeer. The current artist commission for this cavernous space—created by Indigenous Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—encourages visitors into a winding construction based on the scaled-up interior of a reindeer's nose airways. Upon entering, they can wander around or chill out on skins, listening on earphones to tribal seniors telling tales and insights.

Focus on the Nasal Passages

Why the nose? It may appear whimsical, but the exhibit celebrates a rarely recognized biological feat: experts have found that in under a second, the reindeer's nose can raise the temperature of the incoming air it takes in by 80 degrees celsius, enabling the creature to endure in inhospitable Arctic climates. Expanding the nose to human-scale dimensions, Sara says, "creates a perception of smallness that you as a individual are not superior over nature." Sara is a former reporter, young adult author, and rights advocate, who hails from a reindeer-herding family in the far north of Norway. "Maybe that fosters the potential to shift your viewpoint or spark some modesty," she adds.

An Homage to Traditional Ways

The winding structure is among various features in Sara's immersive commission showcasing the culture, knowledge, and philosophy of the Sámi, the sole native group in Europe. Traditionally mobile, the Sámi number approximately 100,000 people ranged across the Norwegian north, Finland, Sweden, and the Kola region (an territory they call Sápmi). They have endured oppression, cultural suppression, and suppression of their language by all four nations. Through highlighting the reindeer, an animal at the heart of the Sámi cosmology and founding narrative, the installation also draws attention to the people's struggles connected to the environmental emergency, property rights, and imperialism.

Metaphor in Elements

On the lengthy entrance incline, there's a soaring, 26-meter structure of reindeer hides ensnared by power and light cables. It can be read as a analogy for the societal frameworks limiting the Sámi. Like an electrical tower, part spiritual ascent, this component of the exhibit, named Goavve-, refers to the Sámi name for an extreme weather phenomenon, whereby solid coatings of ice appear as fluctuating conditions thaw and refreeze the snow, locking in the reindeers' main cold-season food, lichen. The condition is a result of climate change, which is taking place up to four times faster in the Arctic than elsewhere.

Previously, I visited Sara in a remote town during a goavvi winter and joined Sámi reindeer keepers on their snowmobiles in freezing temperatures as they transported containers of supplementary feed on to the wind-scoured Arctic plains to provide manually. These animals crowded round us, pawing the icy ground in futility for vegetative pieces. This expensive and laborious process is having a drastic effect on reindeer husbandry—and on the animals' self-sufficiency. Yet the alternative is malnutrition. As these icy periods become routine, reindeer are succumbing—a number from starvation, others submerging after plunging into streams through prematurely melting ice. On one level, the work is a tribute to them. "Through the stacking of materials, in a way I'm introducing the phenomenon to London," says Sara.

Contrasting Worldviews

The sculpture also highlights the stark difference between the industrial understanding of electricity as a commodity to be exploited for profit and existence and the Sámi outlook of life force as an natural essence in creatures, people, and nature. This venue's past as a industrial facility is linked with this, as is what the Sámi consider eco-imperialism by Nordic countries. In their efforts to be leaders for sustainable power, Scandinavian countries have locked horns with the Sámi over the development of wind energy projects, water power facilities, and digging operations on their native soil; the Sámi argue their fundamental freedoms, livelihoods, and traditions are at risk. "It's very difficult being such a small minority to defend yourself when the reasons are based on environmental protection," Sara notes. "Extractivism has adopted the rhetoric of environmentalism, but nonetheless it's just aiming to find more suitable ways to persist in habits of expenditure."

Personal Challenges

Sara and her kin have personally clashed with the Norwegian government over its tightening regulations on animal husbandry. In 2016, Sara's brother initiated a series of finally failed lawsuits over the forced culling of his herd, supposedly to stop excessive feeding. As a show of solidarity, Sara created a extended set of creations named Pile O'Sápmi including a huge drape of four hundred reindeer skulls, which was displayed at the 2017's art exhibition Documenta 14 and later purchased by the national institution, where it is displayed in the entryway.

The Role of Art in Activism

For numerous Indigenous people, visual expression appears the only realm in which they can be heard by the global community. Recently, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|