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Guests to Tate Modern are used to unusual experiences in its vast Turbine Hall. They've basked under an simulated sun, slid down helter skelters, and witnessed AI-powered jellyfish hovering through the air. Yet this marks the initial time they will be engaging themselves in the complex nose cavities of a reindeer. The latest artistic project for this huge space—designed by Native Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—invites patrons into a winding structure based on the enlarged inside of a reindeer's nose cavities. Inside, they can wander around or chill out on pelts, tuning in on headphones to tribal seniors sharing narratives and wisdom.

The Significance of the Nose

What's the focus on the nose? It could appear quirky, but the artwork pays tribute to a rarely recognized scientific wonder: experts have uncovered that in less than one second, the reindeer's nose can warm the incoming air it inhales by eighty degrees, allowing the creature to endure in inhospitable Arctic temperatures. Expanding the nose to larger than human size, Sara explains, "creates a feeling of smallness that you as a human being are not in control over nature." She is a former writer, children's author, and land defender, who is from a herding family in northern Norway. "Perhaps that creates the potential to change your viewpoint or spark some modesty," she states.

A Tribute to Indigenous Heritage

The winding design is part of a features in Sara's engaging art project showcasing the culture, understanding, and beliefs of the Sámi, the sole native group in Europe. Partially migratory, the Sámi total about 100,000 people ranged across northern Norway, Finland, Sweden, and the Kola region (an region they call Sápmi). They have faced oppression, forced assimilation, and eradication of their tongue by all four countries. With an emphasis on the reindeer, an animal at the core of the Sámi mythology and founding narrative, the installation also draws attention to the group's challenges relating to the climate crisis, land dispossession, and imperialism.

Symbolism in Components

On the long entrance ramp, there's a looming, 26-meter sculpture of reindeer hides trapped by electrical wires. It serves as a metaphor for the political and economic systems constraining the Sámi. Like an electrical tower, part spiritual ascent, this section of the exhibit, called Goavve-, refers to the Sámi term for an extreme weather phenomenon, in which dense layers of ice appear as fluctuating conditions liquefy and ice over the snow, locking in the reindeers' primary winter nourishment, lichen. This phenomenon is a outcome of global heating, which is happening up to much more rapidly in the Far North than elsewhere.

Three years ago, I traveled to see Sara in the Norwegian far north during a icy season and accompanied Sámi herders on their Arctic vehicles in biting cold as they hauled containers of animal nutrition on to the wind-scoured frozen landscape to provide by hand. These animals crowded round us, pawing the frozen ground in vain for lichen-covered pieces. This resource-intensive and laborious procedure is having a severe effect on animal rearing—and on the animals' self-sufficiency. However the alternative is malnutrition. When such conditions become commonplace, reindeer are dying—a number from lack of food, others drowning after sinking in water bodies through prematurely melting ice. On one level, the installation is a monument to them. "Through the stacking of materials, in a way I'm bringing the goavvi to London," says Sara.

Opposing Worldviews

The sculpture also emphasizes the sharp divergence between the modern interpretation of electricity as a resource to be utilized for gain and existence and the Sámi philosophy of vitality as an natural life force in animals, humans, and the environment. Tate Modern's past as a industrial facility is connected to this, as is what the Sámi view as green colonialism by Scandinavian states. As they strive to be leaders for renewable energy, these states have clashed with the Sámi over the development of windfarms, hydroelectric dams, and extraction sites on their native soil; the Sámi contend their fundamental freedoms, livelihoods, and way of life are threatened. "It's very difficult being such a limited population to stand your ground when the arguments are based on global sustainability," Sara notes. "Extractivism has co-opted the language of sustainability, but yet it's just attempting to find more suitable ways to maintain patterns of expenditure."

Personal Conflicts

The artist and her kin have themselves conflicted with the state authorities over its ever-stricter regulations on herding. Previously, Sara's brother embarked on a set of unsuccessful lawsuits over the mandatory slaughter of his livestock, apparently to stop excessive feeding. As a show of solidarity, Sara developed a multi-year collection of pieces named Pile O'Sápmi including a colossal screen of numerous animal bones, which was shown at the 2017 show Documenta 14 and later acquired by the public gallery, where it hangs in the lobby.

The Role of Art in Advocacy

For many Sámi, art seems the only sphere in which they can be heard by the global community. Recently, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|