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Guests to Tate Modern are used to surprising displays in its vast Turbine Hall. They've basked under an man-made sun, descended down helter skelters, and seen automated sea creatures floating through the air. However this marks the inaugural time they will be engaging themselves in the complex nose chambers of a reindeer. The latest artistic project for this cavernous space—developed by Indigenous Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—invites visitors into a labyrinthine structure modeled after the expanded interior of a reindeer's nose airways. Inside, they can stroll around or unwind on skins, listening on headphones to community leaders telling stories and wisdom.

Focus on the Nasal Passages

Why the nose? It could seem playful, but the exhibit celebrates a little-known biological feat: scientists have uncovered that in a fraction of a second, the reindeer's nose can heat the ambient air it inhales by 80°C, helping the animal to survive in extreme Arctic temperatures. Scaling the nose to larger than human size, Sara explains, "produces a feeling of smallness that you as a human being 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. "Perhaps that generates the possibility to alter your outlook or trigger some humility," she states.

A Tribute to Traditional Ways

The labyrinthine structure is among various components in Sara's immersive exhibition celebrating the culture, science, and beliefs of the Sámi, the continent's original inhabitants. Semi-nomadic, the Sámi number approximately 100,000 people ranged across northern Norway, the Finnish Arctic, Sweden, and the Russian Arctic (an area they call Sápmi). They've endured discrimination, forced assimilation, and eradication of their tongue by all four countries. With an emphasis on the reindeer, an creature at the heart of the Sámi mythology and creation story, the installation also spotlights the people's issues connected to the global warming, loss of territory, and external control.

Meaning in Materials

On the extended entrance ramp, there's a soaring, 26-metre structure of skins entangled by power and light cables. It represents a symbol for the societal frameworks restricting the Sámi. Part pylon, part heavenly staircase, this part of the installation, titled Goavve-, points to the Sámi term for an extreme weather phenomenon, wherein dense coatings of ice develop as varying temperatures thaw and solidify again the snow, locking in the reindeers' main cold-season food, fungus. This phenomenon is a outcome of global heating, which is taking place up to at an accelerated rate in the Far North than elsewhere.

Three years ago, I met with Sara in a remote town during a severe cold period and joined Sámi herders on their motorized sleds in biting cold as they carried containers of supplementary feed on to the barren tundra to dispense manually. The herd surrounded round us, scratching the icy ground in vain attempts for vegetative bits. This costly and demanding process is having a significant effect on animal rearing—and on the animals' self-sufficiency. Yet the choice is death. As goavvi winters become frequent, reindeer are dying—a number from starvation, others suffocating after falling into streams through prematurely melting ice. On one level, the work is a memorial to them. "By overlapping of materials, in a way I'm bringing the phenomenon to London," says Sara.

Contrasting Belief Systems

The installation also highlights the clear divergence between the western view of power as a asset to be exploited for gain and existence and the Sámi philosophy of vitality as an inherent life force in animals, people, and nature. The gallery's legacy as a industrial facility is linked with this, as is what the Sámi see as green colonialism by Scandinavian states. In their efforts to be leaders for clean sources, Nordic nations have locked horns with the Sámi over the construction of windfarms, river barriers, and mines on their ancestral land; the Sámi argue their human rights, incomes, and way of life are endangered. "It's very difficult being such a small minority to protect your rights when the arguments are rooted in saving the world," Sara observes. "Mining practices has adopted the discourse of sustainability, but nonetheless it's just aiming to find more suitable ways to continue practices of use."

Family Conflicts

The artist and her family have themselves disagreed with the Norwegian government over its increasingly stringent policies on herding. In 2016, Sara's brother embarked on a set of unsuccessful court actions over the required reduction of his livestock, apparently to stop vegetation depletion. In support, Sara developed a four-year set of creations named Pile O'Sápmi comprising a massive drape of 400 animal bones, which was shown at the 2017 show Documenta 14 and later acquired by the public gallery, where it hangs in the entryway.

Creative Expression as Awareness

Among the community, art seems the exclusive domain in which they can be heard by people of other nations. In 2022, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|