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Guests to Tate Modern are familiar to unexpected experiences in its vast Turbine Hall. They've sunbathed under an artificial sun, descended down amusement rides, and observed automated sea creatures floating through the air. However this marks the first time they will be immersing themselves in the detailed nose chambers of a reindeer. The newest artistic project for this immense space—designed by Native Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—invites gallerygoers into a winding structure inspired by the enlarged interior of a reindeer's nasal cavities. Once inside, they can meander around or chill out on reindeer hides, listening on headphones to tribal seniors telling stories and wisdom.

Focus on the Nasal Passages

Why choose the nasal structure? It might sound quirky, but the installation celebrates a obscure natural marvel: experts have uncovered that in less than one second, the reindeer's nose can warm the surrounding air it inhales by 80 degrees celsius, helping the animal to thrive in extreme Arctic climates. Scaling the nose to human-scale dimensions, Sara explains, "produces a perception of inferiority that you as a individual are not superior over nature." Sara is a ex- writer, children's author, and rights advocate, who hails from a reindeer-herding family in northern Norway. "Possibly that creates the possibility to change your viewpoint or trigger some humility," she continues.

A Tribute to Traditional Ways

The winding design is among various features in Sara's immersive commission celebrating the heritage, knowledge, and beliefs of the Sámi, Europe's only Indigenous people. Partially migratory, the Sámi count roughly 100,000 people ranged across the Norwegian north, Finland, the Swedish Lapland, and the Russian Arctic (an region they call Sápmi). They've endured persecution, forced assimilation, and eradication of their tongue by all four nations. Through highlighting the reindeer, an animal at the center of the Sámi cosmology and founding narrative, the installation also spotlights the community's issues associated with the environmental emergency, property rights, and colonialism.

Meaning in Elements

Along the extended access incline, there's a looming, 26-meter structure of reindeer hides ensnared by utility lines. It can be read as a symbol for the political and economic systems restricting the Sámi. Like an electrical tower, part spiritual ascent, this component of the installation, named Goavve-, refers to the Sámi word for an extreme weather phenomenon, wherein thick layers of ice appear as varying weather melt and refreeze the snow, locking in the reindeers' main cold-season sustenance, fungus. The condition is a outcome of global heating, which is occurring up to four times faster in the Polar region than in other regions.

Previously, I traveled to see Sara in a remote town during a severe cold period and accompanied Sámi herders on their motorized sleds in biting cold as they transported containers of supplementary feed on to the wind-scoured tundra to provide manually. The herd surrounded round us, scratching the frozen ground in futility for mossy bits. This expensive and laborious method is having a significant impact on animal rearing—and on the animals' natural survival. Yet the choice is malnutrition. As these icy periods become routine, reindeer are dying—some from starvation, others suffocating after plunging into water bodies through unstable frozen surfaces. On one level, the art is a monument to them. "With the layering of components, in a way I'm transporting the phenomenon to London," says Sara.

Opposing Worldviews

The sculpture also underscores the sharp contrast between the industrial view of electricity as a resource to be harnessed for profit and survival and the Sámi worldview of life force as an innate life force in creatures, humans, and land. The gallery's history as a industrial facility is connected to this, as is what the Sámi consider green colonialism by Scandinavian states. While attempting to be standard bearers for clean sources, these states have locked horns with the Sámi over the construction of wind energy projects, hydroelectric dams, and digging operations on their native soil; the Sámi argue their fundamental freedoms, ways of life, and way of life are threatened. "It's very difficult being such a tiny group to stand your ground when the reasons are grounded in saving the world," Sara notes. "Mining practices has co-opted the rhetoric of ecology, but nonetheless it's just striving to find more suitable ways to maintain habits of consumption."

Personal Conflicts

The artist and her relatives have personally disagreed with the national administration over its ever-stricter regulations on animal husbandry. Previously, Sara's brother initiated a set of ultimately unsuccessful court actions over the required reduction of his animals, apparently to stop vegetation depletion. In support, Sara produced a extended series of creations called Pile O'Sápmi including a huge curtain of numerous cranial remains, which was shown at the 2017's show Documenta 14 and later purchased by the National Museum of Oslo, where it hangs in the lobby.

Creative Expression as Awareness

For many Sámi, art seems the sole realm in which they can be understood by people of other nations. In 2022, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|