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Visitors to Tate Modern are used to surprising encounters in its vast Turbine Hall. They have basked under an simulated sun, descended down amusement rides, and witnessed AI-powered sea creatures hovering through the air. But this marks the inaugural time they will be venturing themselves in the complex nose cavities of a reindeer. The newest artist commission for this immense space—created by Native Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—encourages gallerygoers into a labyrinthine structure based on the expanded interior of a reindeer's nasal cavities. Upon entering, they can wander around or chill out on reindeer hides, listening on headphones to community leaders telling narratives and knowledge.

Why the Nose?

Why choose the nasal structure? It could appear quirky, but the installation pays tribute to a rarely recognized biological feat: experts have discovered that in a fraction of a second, the reindeer's nose can heat the incoming air it breathes in by eighty degrees, enabling the creature to thrive in inhospitable Arctic temperatures. Expanding the nose to larger than human size, Sara explains, "creates a perception of inferiority that you as a human being are not superior over nature." Sara is a former journalist, young adult author, and land defender, who hails from a herding family in the far north of Norway. "Perhaps that fosters the possibility to change your perspective or spark some modesty," she adds.

An Homage to Traditional Ways

The maze-like design is one of several elements in Sara's immersive commission showcasing the traditions, knowledge, and beliefs of the Sámi, Europe's only Indigenous people. Partially migratory, the Sámi total roughly 100,000 people spread across northern Norway, Finland, Sweden, and Russia's Kola Peninsula (an area they call Sápmi). They've faced oppression, forced assimilation, and suppression of their tongue by all four countries. Through highlighting the reindeer, an animal at the heart of the Sámi mythology and origin tale, the art also spotlights the group's challenges associated with the climate crisis, land dispossession, and external control.

Meaning in Components

On the extended entrance slope, there's a looming, 26-metre formation of skins ensnared by electrical wires. It represents a metaphor for the political and economic systems restricting the Sámi. Like an electrical tower, part celestial ladder, this component of the installation, titled Goavve-, relates to the Sámi name for an extreme weather phenomenon, in which dense sheets of ice develop as changing weather thaw and refreeze the snow, encasing the reindeers' main cold-season sustenance, lichen. This phenomenon is a result of global heating, which is occurring up to at an accelerated rate in the Arctic than elsewhere.

Previously, I visited Sara in the Norwegian far north during a severe cold period and joined Sámi herders on their motorized sleds in chilly conditions as they hauled containers of supplementary feed on to the barren frozen landscape to provide by hand. The herd surrounded round us, pawing the frozen ground in vain for lichen-covered morsels. This costly and demanding procedure is having a severe effect on reindeer husbandry—and on the animals' independence. However the other option is death. As goavvi winters become frequent, reindeer are dying—some from starvation, others suffocating after plunging into water bodies through thinning ice sheets. To some extent, the installation is a memorial to them. "Through the stacking of elements, in a way I'm bringing the condition to London," says Sara.

Diverging Belief Systems

The installation also emphasizes the sharp divergence between the industrial understanding of electricity as a commodity to be exploited for gain and existence and the Sámi outlook of vitality as an inherent essence in creatures, individuals, and nature. The gallery's history as a industrial facility is linked with this, as is what the Sámi see as environmental exploitation by regional governments. While attempting to be exemplars for clean sources, Scandinavian countries have clashed with the Sámi over the development of windfarms, hydroelectric dams, and digging operations on their ancestral land; the Sámi contend their legal protections, livelihoods, and culture are threatened. "It's very difficult being such a limited population to stand your ground when the justifications are based on environmental protection," Sara notes. "Resource exploitation has co-opted the language of environmentalism, but yet it's just striving to find alternative ways to continue practices of use."

Personal Struggles

She and her relatives have personally clashed with the state authorities over its ever-stricter policies on herding. In 2016, Sara's sibling embarked on a series of unsuccessful legal cases over the required reduction of his livestock, supposedly to stop overgrazing. As a show of solidarity, Sara created a four-year set of pieces titled Pile O'Sápmi comprising a huge screen of numerous reindeer skulls, which was exhibited at the the art exhibition Documenta 14 and later obtained by the National Museum of Oslo, where it resides in the lobby.

The Role of Art in Activism

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