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Attendees to Tate Modern are used to unexpected experiences in its vast Turbine Hall. They have basked under an simulated sun, glided down spiral slides, and observed AI-powered jellyfish floating through the air. However this marks the first time they will be engaging themselves in the complex nose passages of a reindeer. The newest artistic project for this huge space—created by Native Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—invites visitors into a maze-like construction modeled after the scaled-up interior of a reindeer's nasal airways. Upon entering, they can meander around or chill out on skins, listening on earphones to tribal seniors imparting stories and wisdom.

Why the Nose?

Why the nose? It might sound quirky, but the artwork pays tribute to a little-known natural marvel: researchers have discovered that in a fraction of a second, the reindeer's nose can heat the incoming air it inhales by 80 degrees celsius, enabling the animal to thrive in inhospitable Arctic conditions. Enlarging the nose to larger than human size, Sara notes, "creates a sense of insignificance that you as a individual are not dominant over nature." The artist is a ex- writer, children's author, and environmental activist, who hails from a herding family in northern Norway. "Perhaps that fosters the possibility to shift your outlook or spark some modesty," she adds.

An Homage to Sámi Culture

The labyrinthine structure is part of a features in Sara's immersive art project showcasing the traditions, knowledge, and beliefs of the Sámi, Europe's only Indigenous people. Traditionally mobile, the Sámi number approximately 100,000 people spread across northern Norway, Finland, the Swedish Lapland, and the Russian Arctic (an territory they call Sápmi). They have experienced oppression, forced assimilation, and repression of their language by all four countries. By focusing on the reindeer, an animal at the core of the Sámi cosmology and founding narrative, the installation also spotlights the group's issues connected to the environmental emergency, loss of territory, and external control.

Metaphor in Materials

At the long access incline, there's a towering, eighty-five-foot sculpture of skins entangled by utility lines. It can be read as a symbol for the political and economic systems constraining the Sámi. Partly a utility pole, part spiritual ascent, this component of the exhibit, titled Goavve-, points to the Sámi name for an harsh environmental condition, wherein solid layers of ice develop as changing conditions melt and solidify again the snow, encasing the reindeers' main cold-season food, fungus. This phenomenon is a outcome of global heating, which is occurring up to much more rapidly in the Far North than elsewhere.

A few years back, I visited Sara in the Norwegian far north during a goavvi winter and accompanied Sámi reindeer keepers on their motorized sleds in chilly conditions as they transported containers of animal nutrition on to the wind-scoured tundra to distribute manually. These animals gathered round us, pawing the icy ground in vain attempts for vegetative bits. This costly and demanding procedure is having a significant effect on herding practices—and on the animals' independence. However the choice is malnutrition. When such conditions become routine, reindeer are dying—some from lack of food, others suffocating after plunging into streams through unstable frozen surfaces. On one level, the art is a memorial to them. "By overlapping of components, in a way I'm introducing the phenomenon to London," says Sara.

Opposing Worldviews

This artwork also underscores the stark contrast between the industrial interpretation of energy as a asset to be exploited for economic benefit and existence and the Sámi outlook of vitality as an innate essence in creatures, individuals, and nature. Tate Modern's legacy as a industrial facility is connected to this, as is what the Sámi see as eco-imperialism by regional governments. While attempting to be leaders for sustainable power, Nordic nations have locked horns with the Sámi over the building of windfarms, hydroelectric dams, and digging operations on their native soil; the Sámi contend their legal protections, incomes, and culture are threatened. "It's hard being such a tiny group to protect your rights when the reasons are rooted in environmental protection," Sara observes. "Resource exploitation has adopted the language of ecology, but still it's just striving to find alternative ways to persist in practices of use."

Family Challenges

She and her relatives have personally disagreed with the Norwegian government over its increasingly stringent policies on animal husbandry. A few years ago, Sara's sibling undertook a set of finally failed court actions over the required reduction of his livestock, apparently to stop overgrazing. To back him, Sara developed a multi-year collection of pieces titled Pile O'Sápmi featuring a huge screen of 400 reindeer skulls, which was shown at the the event Documenta 14 and later acquired by the public gallery, where it hangs in the entrance.

Art as Activism

For many Sámi, creative work appears the sole realm in which they can be listened to by people of other nations. In 2022, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|