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Guests to Tate Modern are familiar to unusual experiences in its expansive Turbine Hall. They have sunbathed under an simulated sun, descended down amusement rides, and witnessed robotic jellyfish hovering through the air. Yet this marks the initial time they will be immersing themselves in the intricate nasal passages of a reindeer. The newest artist commission for this cavernous space—designed by Indigenous Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—welcomes gallerygoers into a maze-like construction based on the scaled-up inside of a reindeer's nasal airways. Upon entering, they can meander around or relax on skins, tuning in on headphones to community leaders telling stories and insights.

Focus on the Nasal Passages

What's the focus on the nose? It may seem quirky, but the exhibit honors a little-known natural marvel: scientists have found that in under a second, the reindeer's nose can heat the surrounding air it inhales by 80 degrees celsius, allowing the animal to endure in harsh Arctic temperatures. Scaling the nose to bigger than a person, Sara notes, "produces a perception of insignificance that you as a human being are not in control over nature." The artist is a ex- journalist, writer for kids, and land defender, who is from a pastoral family in the Norwegian Arctic. "Possibly that fosters the chance to shift your outlook or trigger some modesty," she continues.

A Celebration to Indigenous Heritage

The labyrinthine structure is part of a components in Sara's immersive art project honoring the traditions, understanding, and beliefs of the Sámi, the continent's original inhabitants. Semi-nomadic, the Sámi total roughly 100,000 people spread across the Norwegian north, the Finnish Arctic, Sweden, and the Kola region (an area they call Sápmi). They have faced discrimination, forced assimilation, and repression of their tongue by all four nations. Through highlighting the reindeer, an animal at the heart of the Sámi mythology and origin tale, the installation also highlights the people's challenges relating to the climate crisis, land dispossession, and imperialism.

Meaning in Elements

On the extended entrance incline, there's a towering, 26-meter formation of skins ensnared by utility lines. It serves as a symbol for the governance and financial structures limiting the Sámi. Like an electrical tower, part celestial ladder, this component of the exhibit, named Goavve-, relates to the Sámi word for an severe climatic event, wherein dense sheets of ice form as fluctuating weather liquefy and solidify again the snow, encasing the reindeers' primary cold-season nourishment, moss. Goavvi is a outcome of global heating, which is taking place up to at an accelerated rate in the Polar region than globally.

A few years back, I met with Sara in the Norwegian far north during a icy season and accompanied Sámi herders on their motorized sleds in biting cold as they carried trailers of food pellets on to the barren tundra to distribute by hand. The herd surrounded round us, digging the slippery ground in vain for mossy morsels. This expensive and labour-intensive method is having a drastic impact on reindeer husbandry—and on the animals' self-sufficiency. However the other option is starvation. When such conditions become frequent, reindeer are dying—a number from hunger, others suffocating after sinking in lakes and rivers through unstable frozen surfaces. To some extent, the art is a monument to them. "By overlapping of materials, in a way I'm introducing the goavvi to London," says Sara.

Diverging Perspectives

The installation also emphasizes the clear divergence between the modern view of energy as a commodity to be harnessed for economic benefit and survival and the Sámi outlook of energy as an natural essence in creatures, individuals, and land. This venue's history as a industrial facility is linked with this, as is what the Sámi consider green colonialism by regional governments. As they strive to be leaders for sustainable power, Nordic nations have clashed with the Sámi over the development of wind energy projects, water power facilities, and extraction sites on their ancestral land; the Sámi contend their legal protections, incomes, and way of life are at risk. "It's hard being such a limited population to protect your rights when the justifications are rooted in global sustainability," Sara notes. "Resource exploitation has co-opted the discourse of ecology, but still it's just aiming to find alternative ways to persist in habits of consumption."

Individual Conflicts

The artist and her kin have personally disagreed with the state authorities over its ever-stricter rules on reindeer management. A few years ago, Sara's sibling undertook a series of unsuccessful lawsuits over the forced culling of his livestock, apparently to stop excessive feeding. To back him, Sara produced a multi-year set of pieces called Pile O'Sápmi comprising a colossal screen of four hundred reindeer skulls, which was exhibited at the 2017 event Documenta 14 and later acquired by the National Museum of Oslo, where it resides in the entryway.

Art as Activism

For many Sámi, visual expression appears the sole realm in which they can be understood by the global community. Recently, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|