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Visitors to Tate Modern are used to unusual displays in its spacious Turbine Hall. They've relaxed under an simulated sun, glided down amusement rides, and witnessed AI-powered jellyfish floating through the air. Yet this marks the initial time they will be engaging themselves in the complex nasal chambers of a reindeer. The current creative installation for this immense space—created by Native Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—welcomes patrons into a maze-like construction based on the scaled-up inside of a reindeer's nose cavities. Once inside, they can wander around or relax on skins, tuning in on earphones to tribal seniors sharing stories and knowledge.

Why the Nose?

Why choose the nasal structure? It might appear playful, but the exhibit honors a obscure scientific wonder: researchers have discovered that in less than one second, the reindeer's nose can raise the temperature of the surrounding air it takes in by 80°C, allowing the creature to endure in inhospitable Arctic conditions. Scaling the nose to larger than human size, Sara notes, "generates a sense of smallness that you as a human being are not in control over nature." The artist is a ex- journalist, writer for kids, and rights advocate, who hails from a herding family in the Norwegian Arctic. "Perhaps that fosters the potential to change your outlook or trigger some humility," she continues.

A Tribute to Indigenous Heritage

The winding design is one of several features in Sara's immersive commission showcasing the traditions, understanding, and philosophy of the Sámi, Europe's only Indigenous people. Partially migratory, the Sámi number about 100,000 people distributed across northern Norway, Finland, the Swedish Lapland, and the Russian Arctic (an area they call Sápmi). They've endured oppression, integration policies, and suppression of their language by all four nations. By focusing on the reindeer, an creature at the center of the Sámi belief system and founding narrative, the installation also spotlights the group's challenges connected to the environmental emergency, loss of territory, and external control.

Symbolism in Elements

At the extended entry incline, there's a towering, 26-meter sculpture of skins trapped by power and light cables. It serves as a metaphor for the governance and financial structures limiting the Sámi. Partly a utility pole, part heavenly staircase, this section of the artwork, called Goavve-, relates to the Sámi word for an extreme weather phenomenon, in which thick coatings of ice appear as fluctuating conditions melt and solidify again the snow, encasing the reindeers' key winter food, fungus. This phenomenon is a consequence of climate change, which is occurring up to at an accelerated rate in the Polar region than in other regions.

Three years ago, I met with Sara in Guovdageaidnu during a goavvi winter and accompanied Sámi herders on their Arctic vehicles in freezing temperatures as they transported trailers of food pellets on to the wind-scoured Arctic plains to dispense by hand. The herd surrounded round us, pawing the frozen ground in vain attempts for lichen-covered bits. This expensive and labour-intensive process is having a severe effect on reindeer husbandry—and on the animals' self-sufficiency. But the choice is malnutrition. As goavvi winters become commonplace, reindeer are dying—some from starvation, others suffocating after plunging into water bodies through thinning ice sheets. To some extent, the art is a memorial to them. "Through the stacking of components, in a way I'm introducing the condition to London," says Sara.

Opposing Worldviews

The sculpture also underscores the clear difference between the industrial interpretation of power as a commodity to be harnessed for gain and survival and the Sámi outlook of energy as an natural life force in animals, people, and nature. The gallery's history as a fossil fuel plant is tied up in this, as is what the Sámi see as environmental exploitation by Scandinavian states. In their efforts to be standard bearers for sustainable power, Scandinavian countries have clashed with the Sámi over the development of wind energy projects, river barriers, and extraction sites on their traditional territory; the Sámi contend their legal protections, ways of life, and way of life are at risk. "It's challenging being such a small minority to stand your ground when the arguments are grounded in environmental protection," Sara notes. "Resource exploitation has adopted the language of ecology, but yet it's just aiming to find alternative ways to persist in habits of expenditure."

Individual Struggles

She and her kin have themselves disagreed with the state authorities over its ever-stricter regulations on animal husbandry. Previously, Sara's brother undertook a series of ultimately unsuccessful court actions over the mandatory slaughter of his animals, supposedly to stop excessive feeding. As a show of solidarity, Sara developed a multi-year series of creations called Pile O'Sápmi featuring a huge drape of 400 cranial remains, which was exhibited at the 2017 art exhibition Documenta 14 and later acquired by the public gallery, where it is displayed in the entrance.

Creative Expression as Advocacy

Among the community, creative work seems the only sphere in which they can be listened to by outsiders. Recently, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|