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Guests to Tate Modern are accustomed to unexpected encounters in its expansive Turbine Hall. They have sunbathed under an man-made sun, descended down spiral slides, and seen automated sea creatures floating through the air. Yet this marks the inaugural time they will be engaging themselves in the detailed nasal passages of a reindeer. The current creative installation for this immense space—developed by Native Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—encourages visitors into a labyrinthine construction modeled after the scaled-up interior of a reindeer's nasal cavities. Once inside, they can meander around or relax on reindeer hides, listening on earphones to Sámi elders telling stories and knowledge.

The Significance of the Nose

Why choose the nasal structure? It could appear quirky, but the installation pays tribute to a obscure natural marvel: researchers have uncovered that in less than one second, the reindeer's nose can raise the temperature of the incoming air it inhales by 80°C, allowing the creature to survive in harsh Arctic conditions. Scaling the nose to larger than human size, Sara explains, "creates a feeling of inferiority that you as a human being are not superior over nature." The artist is a former reporter, young adult author, and rights advocate, who comes from a herding family in the far north of Norway. "Perhaps that generates the chance to alter your viewpoint or evoke some humility," she states.

A Celebration to Indigenous Heritage

The winding design is part of a components in Sara's immersive commission celebrating the traditions, understanding, and philosophy of the Sámi, the sole native group in Europe. Semi-nomadic, the Sámi number approximately 100,000 people ranged across northern Norway, Finland, the Swedish Lapland, and Russia's Kola Peninsula (an territory they call Sápmi). They have faced oppression, integration policies, and repression of their language by all four countries. Through highlighting the reindeer, an creature at the core of the Sámi mythology and origin tale, the installation also spotlights the people's issues connected to the global warming, land dispossession, and colonialism.

Symbolism in Components

Along the extended access ramp, there's a towering, 26-metre structure of skins entangled by power and light cables. It can be read as a analogy for the political and economic systems constraining the Sámi. Like an electrical tower, part celestial ladder, this part of the exhibit, named Goavve-, relates to the Sámi word for an severe climatic event, in which dense coatings of ice develop as varying weather melt and solidify again the snow, locking in the reindeers' main winter nourishment, moss. Goavvi is a consequence of planetary warming, which is happening up to at an accelerated rate in the Polar region than globally.

Previously, I met with Sara in a remote town during a severe cold period and went with Sámi herders on their snowmobiles in chilly conditions as they transported carts of food pellets on to the wind-scoured tundra to dispense through labor. These animals crowded round us, scratching the slippery ground in vain attempts for vegetative bits. This resource-intensive and laborious procedure is having a significant impact on herding practices—and on the animals' self-sufficiency. Yet the other option is starvation. When such conditions become routine, reindeer are perishing—a number from starvation, others submerging after plunging into water bodies through thinning ice sheets. On one level, the work is a tribute to them. "With the layering of components, in a way I'm introducing the goavvi to London," says Sara.

Opposing Worldviews

The sculpture also underscores the clear difference between the western interpretation of power as a commodity to be utilized for profit and survival and the Sámi worldview of life force 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 Scandinavian states. In their efforts to be standard bearers for renewable energy, Scandinavian countries have clashed with the Sámi over the development of windfarms, hydroelectric dams, and extraction sites on their ancestral land; the Sámi argue their legal protections, incomes, and way of life are at risk. "It's hard being such a limited population to stand your ground when the justifications are grounded in global sustainability," Sara notes. "Mining practices has appropriated the rhetoric of environmentalism, but still it's just attempting to find alternative ways to maintain habits of consumption."

Personal Struggles

She and her kin have personally disagreed with the state authorities over its increasingly stringent rules on reindeer management. Previously, Sara's sibling initiated a sequence of finally failed court actions over the mandatory slaughter of his animals, ostensibly to stop vegetation depletion. To back him, Sara produced a extended set of creations called Pile O'Sápmi including a massive screen of numerous animal bones, which was exhibited at the the show Documenta 14 and later acquired by the public gallery, where it resides in the entrance.

Art as Awareness

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