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Attendees to Tate Modern are accustomed to surprising experiences in its spacious Turbine Hall. They have relaxed under an man-made sun, descended down amusement rides, and witnessed automated sea creatures floating through the air. But this marks the first time they will be venturing themselves in the complex nasal passages of a reindeer. The latest artistic project for this huge space—developed by Native Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—welcomes gallerygoers into a maze-like structure inspired by the expanded interior of a reindeer's nose cavities. Upon entering, they can wander around or relax on skins, tuning in on earphones to community leaders sharing stories and wisdom.

The Significance of the Nose

What's the focus on the nose? It could sound playful, but the artwork celebrates a little-known natural marvel: scientists have found that in under a second, the reindeer's nose can warm the surrounding air it breathes in by eighty degrees, helping the animal to survive in harsh Arctic temperatures. Expanding the nose to human-scale dimensions, Sara says, "creates a perception of insignificance that you as a person are not dominant over nature." She is a former reporter, young adult author, and land defender, who is from a pastoral family in the Norwegian Arctic. "Maybe that generates the potential to change your viewpoint or trigger some modesty," she continues.

A Tribute to Indigenous Heritage

The maze-like structure is one of several components in Sara's engaging commission celebrating the traditions, knowledge, and worldview of the Sámi, the continent's original inhabitants. Semi-nomadic, the Sámi number approximately 100,000 people spread across the Norwegian north, Finland, the Swedish Lapland, and the Russian Arctic (an area they call Sápmi). They have experienced discrimination, cultural suppression, and suppression of their language by all four states. With an emphasis on the reindeer, an creature at the core of the Sámi belief system and creation story, the work also draws attention to the group's struggles connected to the environmental emergency, property rights, and external control.

Meaning in Elements

At the extended entry ramp, there's a soaring, eighty-five-foot structure of skins trapped by utility lines. It can be read as a symbol for the political and economic systems constraining the Sámi. Like an electrical tower, part spiritual ascent, this section of the exhibit, named Goavve-, relates to the Sámi word for an harsh environmental condition, whereby dense sheets of ice develop as changing weather thaw and solidify again the snow, locking in the reindeers' main winter sustenance, lichen. Goavvi is a result of planetary warming, which is taking place up to four times faster in the Far North than elsewhere.

Previously, I traveled to see Sara in the Norwegian far north during a goavvi winter and joined Sámi herders on their motorized sleds in biting cold as they carried carts of animal nutrition on to the barren Arctic plains to dispense manually. The reindeer gathered round us, digging the slippery ground in futility for lichen-covered morsels. This expensive and demanding process is having a drastic impact on reindeer husbandry—and on the animals' self-sufficiency. Yet the alternative is starvation. When such conditions become routine, reindeer are perishing—some from hunger, others drowning after falling into lakes and rivers through prematurely melting ice. On one level, the art is a tribute to them. "Through the stacking of elements, in a way I'm transporting the condition to London," says Sara.

Opposing Belief Systems

This artwork also highlights the stark divergence between the western view of electricity as a commodity to be harnessed for profit and survival and the Sámi outlook of energy as an inherent life force in creatures, individuals, and land. This venue's past as a coal and oil power station is connected to this, as is what the Sámi see as green colonialism by Scandinavian states. While attempting to be leaders 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 hard being such a limited population to protect your rights when the arguments are based on global sustainability," Sara observes. "Extractivism has appropriated the language of ecology, but still it's just striving to find better ways to persist in habits of expenditure."

Personal Challenges

Sara and her kin have personally clashed with the national administration over its tightening rules on reindeer management. Previously, Sara's sibling undertook a sequence of unsuccessful lawsuits over the required reduction of his livestock, ostensibly to stop vegetation depletion. As a show of solidarity, Sara created a extended set of pieces named Pile O'Sápmi featuring a massive screen of 400 animal bones, which was exhibited at the 2017 art exhibition Documenta 14 and later obtained by the public gallery, where it hangs in the lobby.

Creative Expression as Advocacy

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