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Visitors to Tate Modern are used to surprising encounters in its spacious Turbine Hall. They have basked under an simulated sun, descended down amusement rides, and observed AI-powered sea creatures drifting through the air. But this marks the inaugural time they will be immersing themselves in the complex nose passages of a reindeer. The newest creative installation for this immense space—designed by Indigenous Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—encourages patrons into a winding design inspired by the expanded inside of a reindeer's nose cavities. Inside, they can wander around or unwind on pelts, listening on headphones to community leaders telling tales and wisdom.

Focus on the Nasal Passages

Why the nose? It might sound playful, but the artwork celebrates a little-known natural marvel: researchers have uncovered that in less than one second, the reindeer's nose can raise the temperature of the ambient air it inhales by 80 degrees celsius, allowing the animal to survive in harsh Arctic conditions. Scaling the nose to human-scale dimensions, Sara notes, "generates a feeling of smallness that you as a human being are not in control over nature." The artist is a former writer, children's author, and land defender, who is from a pastoral family in northern Norway. "Possibly that fosters the possibility to alter your viewpoint or trigger some humility," she adds.

A Tribute to Sámi Culture

The winding design is part of a components in Sara's absorbing art project honoring the traditions, knowledge, and philosophy of the Sámi, the sole native group in Europe. Semi-nomadic, the Sámi count about 100,000 people ranged across the Norwegian north, the Finnish Arctic, the Swedish Lapland, and the Kola region (an region they call Sápmi). They've endured persecution, forced assimilation, and repression of their dialect by all four states. Through highlighting the reindeer, an creature at the heart of the Sámi belief system and origin tale, the work also draws attention to the group's challenges connected to the environmental emergency, loss of territory, and imperialism.

Metaphor in Elements

At the extended entry slope, there's a towering, 26-metre sculpture of skins trapped by power and light cables. It can be read as a symbol for the societal frameworks restricting the Sámi. Like an electrical tower, part heavenly staircase, this part of the installation, named Goavve-, refers to the Sámi word for an harsh environmental condition, in which solid sheets of ice appear as varying weather melt and refreeze the snow, trapping the reindeers' main cold-season nourishment, moss. Goavvi is a outcome of climate change, which is taking place up to four times faster in the Arctic than in other regions.

A few years back, I met with Sara in a remote town during a goavvi winter and joined Sámi reindeer keepers on their motorized sleds in freezing temperatures as they hauled trailers of animal nutrition on to the wind-scoured tundra to provide manually. The herd surrounded round us, scratching the slippery ground in vain attempts for lichen-covered bits. This resource-intensive and laborious method is having a severe effect on herding practices—and on the animals' self-sufficiency. But the other option is starvation. When such conditions become routine, reindeer are succumbing—some from hunger, others suffocating after falling into lakes and rivers through prematurely melting ice. To some extent, the art is a memorial to them. "With the layering of components, in a way I'm transporting the condition to London," says Sara.

Contrasting Perspectives

The sculpture also emphasizes the clear divergence between the modern view of power as a asset to be harnessed for gain and existence and the Sámi philosophy of vitality as an inherent essence in creatures, humans, and land. This venue's past as a fossil fuel plant is connected to this, as is what the Sámi view as environmental exploitation by Nordic countries. While attempting to be exemplars for renewable energy, these states have locked horns with the Sámi over the construction of wind energy projects, river barriers, and mines on their native soil; the Sámi assert their fundamental freedoms, livelihoods, and traditions are endangered. "It's challenging being such a limited population to stand your ground when the arguments are based on environmental protection," Sara comments. "Mining practices has appropriated the language of environmentalism, but still it's just attempting to find more suitable ways to maintain habits of expenditure."

Personal Challenges

She and her family have themselves conflicted with the state authorities over its increasingly stringent regulations on animal husbandry. In 2016, Sara's brother initiated a series of unsuccessful court actions over the required reduction of his animals, ostensibly to stop overgrazing. To back him, Sara produced a four-year set of pieces named Pile O'Sápmi featuring a massive drape of four hundred reindeer skulls, which was displayed at the 2017 event Documenta 14 and later acquired by the National Museum of Oslo, where it hangs in the entrance.

Art as Awareness

For numerous Indigenous people, visual expression seems the only domain in which they can be understood by outsiders. Recently, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|