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Visitors to Tate Modern are used to surprising encounters in its spacious Turbine Hall. They have sunbathed under an artificial sun, slid down spiral slides, and witnessed automated jellyfish hovering through the air. Yet this marks the initial time they will be engaging themselves in the intricate nose chambers of a reindeer. The newest artistic project for this huge space—designed by Indigenous Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—encourages patrons into a maze-like structure modeled after the scaled-up inside of a reindeer's nose airways. Upon entering, they can wander around or unwind on reindeer hides, tuning in on earphones to Sámi elders telling tales and wisdom.

Focus on the Nasal Passages

Why choose the nasal structure? It might seem playful, but the exhibit celebrates a little-known biological feat: scientists have found that in under a second, the reindeer's nose can warm the incoming air it breathes in by eighty degrees, allowing the creature to survive in inhospitable Arctic temperatures. Enlarging the nose to bigger than a person, Sara notes, "creates a perception of inferiority that you as a human being are not superior over nature." Sara is a ex- reporter, writer for kids, and land defender, who hails from a reindeer-herding family in the Norwegian Arctic. "Maybe that creates the possibility to alter your outlook or spark some modesty," she continues.

An Homage to Traditional Ways

The maze-like installation is one of several features in Sara's absorbing exhibition celebrating the culture, science, and worldview of the Sámi, the continent's original inhabitants. Partially migratory, the Sámi total about 100,000 people distributed across the Norwegian north, the Finnish Arctic, Sweden, and the Russian Arctic (an area they call Sápmi). They have experienced oppression, cultural suppression, and eradication of their language by all four nations. Through highlighting the reindeer, an animal at the heart of the Sámi cosmology and creation story, the art also draws attention to the people's issues associated with the environmental emergency, property rights, and colonialism.

Metaphor in Elements

On the lengthy entry ramp, there's a looming, 26-metre structure of reindeer hides trapped by power and light cables. It represents a analogy for the political and economic systems constraining the Sámi. Partly a utility pole, part spiritual ascent, this component of the installation, named Goavve-, refers to the Sámi name for an harsh environmental condition, whereby thick sheets of ice form as varying weather thaw and refreeze the snow, trapping the reindeers' key cold-season sustenance, fungus. This phenomenon is a result of climate change, which is occurring up to four times faster in the Polar region than globally.

Previously, I visited Sara in Guovdageaidnu during a icy season and went with Sámi herders on their snowmobiles in freezing temperatures as they transported carts of food pellets on to the wind-scoured Arctic plains to distribute manually. These animals crowded round us, pawing the frozen ground in futility for vegetative pieces. This resource-intensive and laborious procedure is having a severe effect on animal rearing—and on the animals' natural survival. But the other option is malnutrition. When such conditions become routine, reindeer are succumbing—a number from lack of food, others submerging after plunging into water bodies through unstable frozen surfaces. To some extent, the art is a tribute to them. "By overlapping of elements, in a way I'm transporting the phenomenon to London," says Sara.

Contrasting Belief Systems

This artwork also highlights the sharp difference between the western interpretation of power as a asset to be utilized for gain and survival and the Sámi outlook of energy as an inherent essence in creatures, individuals, and land. This venue's legacy as a fossil fuel plant is tied up in this, as is what the Sámi view as green colonialism by regional governments. While attempting to be exemplars for renewable energy, Scandinavian countries have locked horns with the Sámi over the building of turbine fields, river barriers, and digging operations on their ancestral land; the Sámi assert their legal protections, incomes, and way of life are endangered. "It's very difficult being such a small minority to stand your ground when the reasons are based on saving the world," Sara observes. "Mining practices has appropriated the language of environmentalism, but nonetheless it's just striving to find alternative ways to maintain patterns of consumption."

Personal Challenges

The artist and her family have personally conflicted with the state authorities over its tightening rules on reindeer management. Previously, Sara's sibling embarked on a sequence of ultimately unsuccessful lawsuits over the required reduction of his herd, supposedly to stop vegetation depletion. As a show of solidarity, Sara developed a extended collection of pieces called Pile O'Sápmi comprising a massive screen of four hundred reindeer skulls, which was shown at the 2017 event Documenta 14 and later purchased by the National Museum of Oslo, where it resides in the lobby.

Art as Awareness

For many Sámi, visual expression is the sole sphere in which they can be listened to by people of other nations. In 2022, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|