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Guests to Tate Modern are accustomed to unusual displays in its spacious Turbine Hall. They've relaxed under an artificial sun, descended down amusement rides, and observed robotic jellyfish floating through the air. However this marks the inaugural time they will be immersing themselves in the intricate nasal cavities of a reindeer. The newest artist commission for this immense space—designed by Indigenous Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—encourages patrons into a winding structure modeled after the expanded inside of a reindeer's nasal passages. Upon entering, they can meander around or chill out on skins, tuning in on headphones to community leaders imparting tales and insights.

Why the Nose?

Why the nose? It might seem playful, but the artwork honors a obscure natural marvel: researchers have found that in a fraction of a second, the reindeer's nose can warm the incoming air it breathes in by eighty degrees, allowing the creature to thrive in harsh Arctic temperatures. Scaling the nose to larger than human size, Sara says, "produces a perception of smallness that you as a individual are not in control over nature." Sara is a ex- writer, young adult author, and environmental activist, who comes from a herding family in northern Norway. "Maybe that creates the chance to shift your outlook or trigger some humility," she continues.

A Celebration to Indigenous Heritage

The maze-like structure is part of a elements in Sara's immersive commission honoring the heritage, knowledge, and philosophy of the Sámi, the continent's original inhabitants. Traditionally mobile, the Sámi number about 100,000 people spread across the Norwegian north, the Finnish Arctic, the Swedish Lapland, and the Russian Arctic (an territory they call Sápmi). They have faced discrimination, integration policies, and eradication of their dialect by all four nations. Through highlighting the reindeer, an animal at the core of the Sámi mythology and origin tale, the installation also draws attention to the group's challenges connected to the global warming, loss of territory, and external control.

Meaning in Components

At the extended access incline, there's a towering, 26-meter sculpture of pelts trapped by power and light cables. It can be read as a symbol for the political and economic systems limiting the Sámi. Partly a utility pole, part celestial ladder, this component of the exhibit, named Goavve-, refers to the Sámi word for an extreme weather phenomenon, wherein thick layers of ice appear as changing weather liquefy and refreeze the snow, locking in the reindeers' key winter food, fungus. Goavvi is a consequence of planetary warming, which is happening up to much more rapidly in the Far North than elsewhere.

Previously, I visited Sara in the Norwegian far north during a goavvi winter and joined Sámi pastoralists on their snowmobiles in chilly conditions as they carried trailers of food pellets on to the wind-scoured Arctic plains to dispense by hand. These animals surrounded round us, pawing the frozen ground in futility for vegetative pieces. This resource-intensive and demanding method is having a drastic effect on reindeer husbandry—and on the animals' independence. Yet the choice is death. When such conditions become routine, reindeer are succumbing—some from starvation, others submerging after sinking in lakes and rivers through thinning ice sheets. To some extent, the art is a tribute to them. "By overlapping of elements, in a way I'm introducing the goavvi to London," says Sara.

Opposing Worldviews

This artwork also underscores the clear divergence between the industrial understanding of electricity as a asset to be utilized for gain and survival and the Sámi philosophy of life force as an innate life force in animals, humans, and the environment. The gallery's history as a industrial facility is linked with this, as is what the Sámi see as green colonialism by Scandinavian states. While attempting to be leaders for clean sources, Nordic nations have locked horns with the Sámi over the development of windfarms, river barriers, and extraction sites on their traditional territory; the Sámi argue their fundamental freedoms, ways of life, and way of life are at risk. "It's challenging being such a small minority to stand your ground when the arguments are grounded in global sustainability," Sara comments. "Extractivism has adopted the discourse of environmentalism, but nonetheless it's just attempting to find more suitable ways to maintain habits of use."

Individual Conflicts

She and her kin have themselves clashed with the Norwegian government over its increasingly stringent regulations on reindeer management. A few years ago, Sara's brother undertook a series of finally failed legal cases over the mandatory slaughter of his livestock, supposedly to stop vegetation depletion. To back him, Sara developed a extended collection of creations titled Pile O'Sápmi featuring a colossal drape of four hundred reindeer skulls, which was shown at the the show Documenta 14 and later acquired by the National Museum of Oslo, where it resides in the lobby.

Creative Expression as Advocacy

Among the community, creative work seems the exclusive sphere in which they can be understood by outsiders. In 2022, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|