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Visitors to Tate Modern are used to surprising encounters in its spacious Turbine Hall. They've sunbathed under an simulated sun, slid down helter skelters, and seen AI-powered jellyfish hovering through the air. But this marks the initial time they will be immersing themselves in the detailed nose chambers of a reindeer. The current creative installation for this huge space—created by Indigenous Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—welcomes patrons into a labyrinthine construction based on the enlarged interior of a reindeer's nasal passages. Upon entering, they can stroll around or relax on reindeer hides, tuning in on earphones to community leaders sharing tales and insights.

Why the Nose?

What's the focus on the nose? It may seem whimsical, but the exhibit honors a obscure biological feat: scientists have uncovered that in a fraction of a second, the reindeer's nose can heat the surrounding air it takes in by eighty degrees, helping the creature to survive in extreme Arctic climates. Expanding the nose to human-scale dimensions, Sara explains, "generates a sense of insignificance that you as a individual are not in control over nature." She is a former reporter, writer for kids, and land defender, who hails from a herding family in northern Norway. "Possibly that fosters the potential to alter your viewpoint or trigger some humility," she continues.

A Celebration to Sámi Culture

The maze-like installation is among various elements in Sara's immersive exhibition showcasing the heritage, understanding, and worldview of the Sámi, the sole native group in Europe. Traditionally mobile, the Sámi total roughly 100,000 people ranged across northern Norway, the Finnish Arctic, Sweden, and the Kola region (an territory they call Sápmi). They have experienced oppression, cultural suppression, and suppression of their tongue by all four states. Through highlighting the reindeer, an creature at the heart of the Sámi belief system and creation story, the installation also spotlights the group's challenges connected to the climate crisis, loss of territory, and colonialism.

Metaphor in Materials

On the long entrance incline, there's a soaring, 26-meter formation of skins trapped by electrical wires. It serves as a symbol for the political and economic systems constraining the Sámi. Partly a utility pole, part heavenly staircase, this component of the installation, titled Goavve-, points to the Sámi word for an severe climatic event, whereby dense layers of ice form as varying weather thaw and refreeze the snow, locking in the reindeers' main cold-season nourishment, moss. The condition is a consequence of planetary warming, which is occurring up to at an accelerated rate in the Arctic than in other regions.

Previously, I visited Sara in a remote town during a severe cold period and accompanied Sámi pastoralists on their Arctic vehicles in chilly conditions as they hauled trailers of animal nutrition on to the barren frozen landscape to dispense manually. The herd crowded round us, pawing the frozen ground in vain attempts for mossy bits. This costly and demanding procedure is having a significant effect on animal rearing—and on the animals' self-sufficiency. But the other option is death. When such conditions become commonplace, reindeer are succumbing—a number from hunger, others drowning after sinking in streams through unstable frozen surfaces. On one level, the art is a tribute to them. "By overlapping of elements, in a way I'm introducing the goavvi to London," says Sara.

Diverging Belief Systems

The sculpture also emphasizes the sharp difference between the modern interpretation of power as a asset to be utilized for economic benefit and survival and the Sámi outlook of energy as an inherent power in animals, individuals, and land. The gallery's past as a industrial facility is connected to this, as is what the Sámi view as green colonialism by Nordic countries. While attempting to be standard bearers for renewable energy, these states have disagreed with the Sámi over the construction of windfarms, water power facilities, and mines on their ancestral land; the Sámi contend their fundamental freedoms, livelihoods, and culture are endangered. "It's hard being such a small minority to protect your rights when the justifications are grounded in saving the world," Sara observes. "Resource exploitation has co-opted the language of ecology, but nonetheless it's just attempting to find more suitable ways to continue habits of use."

Individual Conflicts

She and her relatives have personally conflicted with the national administration over its ever-stricter policies on herding. A few years ago, Sara's brother undertook a series of ultimately unsuccessful lawsuits over the forced culling of his herd, ostensibly to stop overgrazing. As a show of solidarity, Sara created a extended collection of artworks named Pile O'Sápmi including a huge drape of 400 reindeer skulls, which was shown at the 2017's art exhibition Documenta 14 and later purchased by the national institution, where it is displayed in the entrance.

Creative Expression as Advocacy

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