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Attendees to Tate Modern are accustomed to unusual displays in its spacious Turbine Hall. They have relaxed under an man-made sun, descended down amusement rides, and observed automated jellyfish drifting through the air. However this marks the initial time they will be venturing themselves in the detailed nasal cavities of a reindeer. The newest creative installation for this huge space—developed by Native Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—encourages patrons into a winding design inspired by the scaled-up inside of a reindeer's nasal airways. Once inside, they can wander around or unwind on reindeer hides, tuning in on headphones to Sámi elders telling stories and wisdom.

The Significance of the Nose

Why choose the nasal structure? It may seem whimsical, but the artwork celebrates a little-known biological feat: experts have found that in less than one second, the reindeer's nose can warm the ambient air it inhales by 80°C, helping the creature to endure in inhospitable Arctic temperatures. Expanding the nose to bigger than a person, Sara says, "produces a perception of inferiority that you as a person are not in control over nature." Sara is a former writer, writer for kids, and rights advocate, who is from a herding family in the Norwegian Arctic. "Maybe that generates the chance to alter your viewpoint or trigger some modesty," she adds.

An Homage to Indigenous Heritage

The labyrinthine installation is among various features in Sara's immersive exhibition showcasing the culture, knowledge, and philosophy of the Sámi, Europe's only Indigenous people. Partially migratory, the Sámi total roughly 100,000 people distributed across the Norwegian north, the Finnish Arctic, Sweden, and the Kola region (an area they call Sápmi). They've faced discrimination, cultural suppression, and suppression of their tongue by all four nations. With an emphasis on the reindeer, an animal at the core of the Sámi mythology and creation story, the work also highlights the group's struggles connected to the global warming, loss of territory, and imperialism.

Symbolism in Elements

Along the extended access slope, there's a soaring, 26-meter sculpture of pelts trapped by utility lines. It can be read as a analogy for the societal frameworks constraining the Sámi. Part pylon, part heavenly staircase, this component of the exhibit, named Goavve-, refers to the Sámi name for an severe climatic event, wherein thick sheets of ice develop as varying weather melt and ice over the snow, locking in the reindeers' main winter nourishment, moss. This phenomenon is a consequence of planetary warming, which is occurring up to four times faster in the Arctic than elsewhere.

A few years back, I met with Sara in a remote town during a icy season and went with Sámi pastoralists on their snowmobiles in chilly conditions as they carried trailers of food pellets on to the exposed Arctic plains to provide manually. These animals crowded round us, pawing the icy ground in futility for vegetative pieces. This expensive and labour-intensive method is having a severe influence on animal rearing—and on the animals' independence. However the other option is malnutrition. As goavvi winters become frequent, reindeer are perishing—a number from lack of food, others drowning after falling into water bodies through unstable frozen surfaces. On one level, the installation is a tribute to them. "With the layering of elements, in a way I'm transporting the phenomenon to London," says Sara.

Diverging Perspectives

The installation also emphasizes the stark divergence between the western interpretation of energy as a resource to be harnessed for economic benefit and livelihood and the Sámi outlook of vitality as an innate life force in creatures, individuals, and nature. This venue's past as a industrial facility is linked with this, as is what the Sámi consider environmental exploitation by Scandinavian states. While attempting to be leaders for sustainable power, these states have locked horns with the Sámi over the building of wind energy projects, water power facilities, and extraction sites on their native soil; the Sámi argue their legal protections, ways of life, and culture are endangered. "It's challenging being such a small minority to defend yourself when the arguments are based on environmental protection," Sara observes. "Resource exploitation has adopted the discourse of ecology, but yet it's just striving to find better ways to persist in practices of use."

Individual Challenges

Sara and her family have personally conflicted with the state authorities over its tightening rules on reindeer management. A few years ago, Sara's sibling embarked on a series of finally failed lawsuits over the required reduction of his herd, apparently to stop overgrazing. As a show of solidarity, Sara produced a four-year collection of pieces named Pile O'Sápmi including a massive screen of numerous animal bones, which was exhibited at the 2017 event Documenta 14 and later obtained by the National Museum of Oslo, where it hangs in the entryway.

Creative Expression as Advocacy

For many Sámi, art is the exclusive domain in which they can be listened to by the global community. In 2022, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|