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Guests to Tate Modern are accustomed to unexpected experiences in its vast Turbine Hall. They have sunbathed under an artificial sun, descended down amusement rides, and observed AI-powered jellyfish drifting through the air. But this marks the inaugural time they will be venturing themselves in the complex nose cavities of a reindeer. The latest creative installation for this immense space—designed by Native Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—welcomes gallerygoers into a maze-like construction based on the scaled-up interior of a reindeer's nasal passages. Inside, they can stroll around or unwind on pelts, tuning in on headphones to tribal seniors imparting tales and knowledge.

Focus on the Nasal Passages

Why the nose? It could sound whimsical, but the installation pays tribute to a rarely recognized scientific wonder: researchers have found that in under a second, the reindeer's nose can warm the incoming air it takes in by eighty degrees, allowing the animal to endure in inhospitable Arctic climates. Scaling the nose to larger than human size, Sara notes, "creates a perception of insignificance that you as a person are not in control over nature." The artist is a former journalist, children's author, and land defender, who is from a reindeer-herding family in northern Norway. "Perhaps that creates the chance to change your outlook or spark some humility," she continues.

An Homage to Traditional Ways

The maze-like installation is one of several features in Sara's engaging commission showcasing the heritage, science, and philosophy of the Sámi, the sole native group in Europe. Traditionally mobile, the Sámi count about 100,000 people distributed across northern Norway, Finland, Sweden, and the Russian Arctic (an region they call Sápmi). They have faced persecution, integration policies, and repression of their dialect by all four states. By focusing on the reindeer, an animal at the center of the Sámi cosmology and origin tale, the work also draws attention to the group's challenges relating to the environmental emergency, property rights, and colonialism.

Meaning in Materials

On the lengthy entrance slope, there's a towering, eighty-five-foot formation of reindeer hides ensnared by utility lines. It can be read as a metaphor for the political and economic systems restricting the Sámi. Like an electrical tower, part spiritual ascent, this component of the exhibit, named Goavve-, points to the Sámi name for an harsh environmental condition, whereby dense layers of ice develop as varying weather liquefy and refreeze the snow, trapping the reindeers' main winter food, lichen. This phenomenon is a consequence of planetary warming, which is happening up to much more rapidly in the Far North than elsewhere.

Previously, I met with Sara in Guovdageaidnu during a severe cold period and went with Sámi pastoralists on their snowmobiles in freezing temperatures as they hauled carts of food pellets on to the wind-scoured tundra to provide by hand. The herd crowded round us, scratching the icy ground in vain for vegetative morsels. This resource-intensive and labour-intensive procedure is having a drastic effect on animal rearing—and on the animals' natural survival. But the alternative is starvation. As goavvi winters become routine, reindeer are succumbing—some from lack of food, others submerging after plunging into water bodies through thinning ice sheets. In a sense, the work is a monument to them. "With the layering of materials, in a way I'm transporting the goavvi to London," says Sara.

Contrasting Worldviews

The sculpture also underscores the clear difference between the modern interpretation of energy as a commodity to be harnessed for profit and survival and the Sámi outlook of energy as an inherent power in creatures, people, and nature. The gallery's past as a industrial facility is connected to this, as is what the Sámi view as green colonialism by Nordic countries. In their efforts to be leaders for renewable energy, these states have disagreed with the Sámi over the building of windfarms, hydroelectric dams, and digging operations on their native soil; the Sámi argue their human rights, incomes, and culture are at risk. "It's very difficult being such a limited population to protect your rights when the justifications are based on environmental protection," Sara notes. "Mining practices has appropriated the rhetoric of environmentalism, but still it's just striving to find better ways to persist in patterns of consumption."

Personal Conflicts

The artist and her kin have personally conflicted with the national administration over its ever-stricter policies on herding. In 2016, Sara's brother undertook a sequence of unsuccessful lawsuits over the mandatory slaughter of his animals, supposedly to stop vegetation depletion. To back him, Sara created a extended collection of pieces titled Pile O'Sápmi comprising a massive drape of four hundred reindeer skulls, which was exhibited at the 2017 event Documenta 14 and later obtained by the national institution, where it is displayed in the entryway.

Art as Activism

Among the community, art appears the only domain in which they can be listened to by the global community. In 2022, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|