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Guests to Tate Modern are familiar to surprising experiences in its vast Turbine Hall. They have relaxed under an man-made sun, glided down amusement rides, and seen robotic sea creatures floating through the air. However this marks the initial time they will be venturing themselves in the intricate nasal chambers of a reindeer. The current creative installation for this immense space—developed by Indigenous Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—encourages gallerygoers into a labyrinthine construction modeled after the expanded inside of a reindeer's nose airways. Upon entering, they can meander around or chill out on pelts, listening on headphones to community leaders sharing stories and knowledge.

Focus on the Nasal Passages

Why the nose? It could sound quirky, but the artwork celebrates a little-known scientific wonder: scientists have found that in less than one second, the reindeer's nose can raise the temperature of the surrounding air it takes in by 80 degrees celsius, enabling the animal to thrive in inhospitable Arctic conditions. Expanding the nose to human-scale dimensions, Sara explains, "produces a sense of insignificance that you as a human being are not in control over nature." The artist is a former reporter, young adult author, and land defender, who comes from a reindeer-herding family in northern Norway. "Possibly that generates the potential to shift your perspective or spark some modesty," she states.

An Homage to Traditional Ways

The labyrinthine installation is one of several features in Sara's engaging art project showcasing the culture, understanding, and beliefs of the Sámi, the continent's original inhabitants. Partially migratory, the Sámi count roughly 100,000 people ranged across the Norwegian north, Finland, Sweden, and the Russian Arctic (an region they call Sápmi). They've experienced discrimination, cultural suppression, and suppression of their tongue by all four nations. By focusing on the reindeer, an creature at the heart of the Sámi cosmology and origin tale, the installation also draws attention to the community's challenges connected to the climate crisis, property rights, and external control.

Meaning in Elements

At the long access ramp, there's a towering, eighty-five-foot structure of skins trapped by power and light cables. It serves as a metaphor for the political and economic systems constraining the Sámi. Part pylon, part spiritual ascent, this component of the exhibit, titled Goavve-, relates to the Sámi name for an severe climatic event, wherein dense coatings of ice form as changing temperatures liquefy and refreeze the snow, encasing the reindeers' primary cold-season food, fungus. This phenomenon is a outcome of climate change, which is taking place up to four times faster in the Polar region than elsewhere.

Three years ago, I traveled to see Sara in a remote town during a severe cold period and went with Sámi reindeer keepers on their motorized sleds in freezing temperatures as they transported containers of animal nutrition on to the barren tundra to provide manually. The reindeer surrounded round us, digging the slippery ground in futility for mossy morsels. This expensive and laborious process is having a severe impact on reindeer husbandry—and on the animals' independence. However the other option is death. As goavvi winters become frequent, reindeer are succumbing—some from starvation, others suffocating after plunging into streams through prematurely melting ice. To some extent, the art is a tribute to them. "With the layering of elements, in a way I'm introducing the goavvi to London," says Sara.

Opposing Belief Systems

The installation also emphasizes the clear divergence between the modern interpretation of electricity as a commodity to be exploited for profit and survival and the Sámi outlook of vitality as an innate life force in creatures, humans, and land. Tate Modern's history as a industrial facility is connected to this, as is what the Sámi consider eco-imperialism by regional governments. While attempting to be leaders for clean sources, Nordic nations have clashed with the Sámi over the construction of turbine fields, water power facilities, and digging operations on their traditional territory; the Sámi assert their legal protections, ways of life, and traditions are endangered. "It's very difficult being such a limited population to protect your rights when the arguments are rooted in saving the world," Sara notes. "Extractivism has adopted the rhetoric of ecology, but yet it's just aiming to find more suitable ways to continue patterns of use."

Individual Challenges

Sara and her family have themselves clashed with the state authorities over its increasingly stringent regulations on herding. Previously, Sara's sibling undertook a set of ultimately unsuccessful legal cases over the mandatory slaughter of his animals, supposedly to stop overgrazing. As a show of solidarity, Sara created a extended set of pieces titled Pile O'Sápmi comprising a massive drape of numerous animal bones, which was shown at the the art exhibition Documenta 14 and later purchased by the public gallery, where it resides in the entrance.

The Role of Art in Awareness

Among the community, art is the exclusive realm in which they can be listened to by outsiders. In 2022, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|