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Visitors to Tate Modern are used to unusual encounters in its expansive Turbine Hall. They have sunbathed under an man-made sun, slid down amusement rides, and observed automated sea creatures hovering through the air. Yet this marks the first time they will be engaging themselves in the detailed nasal passages of a reindeer. The current creative installation for this immense space—designed by Native Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—encourages visitors into a labyrinthine construction modeled after the enlarged inside of a reindeer's nasal passages. Inside, they can wander around or chill out on pelts, tuning in on earphones to tribal seniors sharing tales and insights.

Focus on the Nasal Passages

Why the nose? It may appear playful, but the installation pays tribute to a little-known scientific wonder: scientists have uncovered that in a fraction of a second, the reindeer's nose can raise the temperature of the ambient air it breathes in by 80 degrees celsius, enabling the animal to survive in inhospitable Arctic temperatures. Enlarging the nose to human-scale dimensions, Sara notes, "creates a sense of insignificance that you as a person are not in control over nature." Sara is a former writer, young adult author, and environmental activist, who comes from a pastoral family in the far north of Norway. "Perhaps that fosters the chance to alter your perspective or spark some modesty," she states.

A Celebration to Indigenous Heritage

The maze-like installation is one of several elements in Sara's absorbing commission celebrating the heritage, science, and worldview of the Sámi, the sole native group in Europe. Traditionally mobile, the Sámi number about 100,000 people distributed across northern Norway, Finland, the Swedish Lapland, and Russia's Kola Peninsula (an territory they call Sápmi). They have experienced persecution, forced assimilation, and eradication of their tongue by all four states. By focusing on the reindeer, an creature at the core of the Sámi mythology and founding narrative, the art also highlights the group's struggles relating to the global warming, loss of territory, and imperialism.

Metaphor in Materials

On the extended access slope, there's a towering, eighty-five-foot structure of skins ensnared by power and light cables. It can be read as a metaphor for the societal frameworks limiting the Sámi. Like an electrical tower, part heavenly staircase, this section of the installation, called Goavve-, relates to the Sámi name for an severe climatic event, wherein thick coatings of ice appear as fluctuating weather melt and refreeze the snow, encasing the reindeers' primary cold-season food, fungus. The condition is a consequence of planetary warming, which is occurring up to much more rapidly in the Polar region than elsewhere.

Previously, I visited Sara in the Norwegian far north during a goavvi winter and joined Sámi pastoralists on their motorized sleds in biting cold as they transported trailers of food pellets on to the barren Arctic plains to provide manually. The reindeer gathered round us, scratching the frozen ground in vain for lichen-covered bits. This expensive and demanding process is having a significant impact on reindeer husbandry—and on the animals' self-sufficiency. However the other option is malnutrition. As goavvi winters become commonplace, reindeer are perishing—a number from hunger, others drowning after plunging into streams through unstable frozen surfaces. To some extent, the installation is a monument to them. "By overlapping of materials, in a way I'm introducing the condition to London," says Sara.

Opposing Perspectives

The installation also highlights the clear divergence between the industrial view of electricity as a resource to be utilized for profit and livelihood and the Sámi philosophy of vitality as an innate life force in animals, individuals, and the environment. The gallery's legacy as a fossil fuel plant is linked with this, as is what the Sámi view as environmental exploitation by Nordic countries. In their efforts to be standard bearers for sustainable power, Scandinavian countries have locked horns with the Sámi over the development of wind energy projects, river barriers, and mines on their native soil; the Sámi argue their legal protections, incomes, and traditions are threatened. "It's challenging being such a limited population to defend yourself when the reasons are grounded in environmental protection," Sara observes. "Mining practices has adopted the rhetoric of environmentalism, but nonetheless it's just attempting to find better ways to continue patterns of consumption."

Individual Struggles

She and her family have personally disagreed with the Norwegian government over its increasingly stringent regulations on animal husbandry. In 2016, Sara's brother undertook a series of unsuccessful legal cases over the mandatory slaughter of his herd, apparently to stop overgrazing. In support, Sara created a four-year set of pieces titled Pile O'Sápmi including a massive screen of numerous reindeer skulls, which was exhibited at the the event Documenta 14 and later obtained by the National Museum of Oslo, where it resides in the lobby.

Art as Activism

For numerous Indigenous people, art appears the only sphere in which they can be understood by people of other nations. In 2022, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|