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Visitors to Tate Modern are accustomed to unexpected displays in its spacious Turbine Hall. They've basked under an artificial sun, glided down spiral slides, and seen robotic sea creatures hovering through the air. But this marks the first time they will be venturing themselves in the complex nose cavities of a reindeer. The latest artistic project for this immense space—designed by Native Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—welcomes patrons into a winding construction based on the expanded interior of a reindeer's nasal passages. Upon entering, they can stroll around or chill out on skins, tuning in on headphones to Sámi elders sharing tales and insights.

Focus on the Nasal Passages

Why choose the nasal structure? It might appear playful, but the installation pays tribute to a little-known biological feat: researchers have found that in a fraction of a second, the reindeer's nose can heat the ambient air it takes in by eighty degrees, allowing the creature to survive in extreme Arctic conditions. Scaling the nose to bigger than a person, Sara notes, "creates a perception of inferiority that you as a person are not dominant over nature." She is a former reporter, children's author, and rights advocate, who comes from a reindeer-herding family in the far north of Norway. "Maybe that generates the chance to alter your viewpoint or evoke some modesty," she adds.

A Celebration to Indigenous Heritage

The labyrinthine design is one of several elements in Sara's absorbing exhibition honoring the heritage, understanding, and beliefs of the Sámi, the continent's original inhabitants. Traditionally mobile, the Sámi count roughly 100,000 people distributed across the Norwegian north, Finland, the Swedish Lapland, and Russia's Kola Peninsula (an area they call Sápmi). They've endured persecution, forced assimilation, and suppression of their tongue by all four states. With an emphasis on the reindeer, an creature at the heart of the Sámi mythology and creation story, the art also highlights the people's struggles associated with the global warming, land dispossession, and imperialism.

Symbolism in Components

Along the long entrance ramp, there's a towering, 26-meter formation of pelts trapped by electrical wires. It serves as a analogy for the societal frameworks limiting the Sámi. Like an electrical tower, part spiritual ascent, this section of the exhibit, called Goavve-, refers to the Sámi name for an severe climatic event, whereby dense coatings of ice develop as varying conditions liquefy and ice over the snow, encasing the reindeers' main winter food, moss. The condition is a consequence of global heating, which is occurring up to at an accelerated rate in the Far North than in other regions.

Previously, I traveled to see Sara in a remote town during a severe cold period and joined Sámi pastoralists on their snowmobiles in biting cold as they hauled carts of animal nutrition on to the barren tundra to provide by hand. The reindeer gathered round us, scratching the icy ground in vain for vegetative bits. This costly and demanding process is having a drastic influence on animal rearing—and on the animals' natural survival. Yet the choice is malnutrition. As goavvi winters become routine, reindeer are perishing—a number from lack of food, others submerging after falling into water bodies through prematurely melting ice. To some extent, the work is a monument to them. "Through the stacking of materials, in a way I'm bringing the phenomenon to London," says Sara.

Contrasting Belief Systems

This artwork also underscores the sharp contrast between the western understanding of electricity as a resource to be harnessed for profit and survival and the Sámi outlook of life force as an innate essence in animals, people, and land. Tate Modern's past as a fossil fuel plant is tied up in this, as is what the Sámi consider green colonialism by regional governments. As they strive to be leaders for renewable energy, Nordic nations have clashed with the Sámi over the building of wind energy projects, hydroelectric dams, and extraction sites on their native soil; the Sámi contend their legal protections, incomes, and culture are endangered. "It's hard being such a limited population to defend yourself when the justifications are based on environmental protection," Sara observes. "Mining practices has adopted the rhetoric of ecology, but yet it's just striving to find better ways to continue practices of expenditure."

Personal Challenges

The artist and her kin have themselves clashed with the Norwegian government over its tightening rules on animal husbandry. In 2016, Sara's sibling initiated a set of unsuccessful court actions over the required reduction of his animals, apparently to stop excessive feeding. To back him, Sara created a extended collection of pieces called Pile O'Sápmi featuring a huge curtain of numerous reindeer skulls, which was shown at the 2017 art exhibition Documenta 14 and later obtained by the National Museum of Oslo, where it hangs in the entrance.

Art as Activism

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