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Attendees to Tate Modern are familiar to surprising experiences in its expansive Turbine Hall. They've relaxed under an man-made sun, glided down helter skelters, and observed AI-powered jellyfish drifting through the air. But this marks the first time they will be immersing themselves in the complex nasal cavities of a reindeer. The latest creative installation for this cavernous space—developed by Native Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—invites patrons into a maze-like structure based on the enlarged interior of a reindeer's nose passages. Upon entering, they can wander around or unwind on pelts, tuning in on earphones to tribal seniors telling tales and wisdom.

Focus on the Nasal Passages

Why choose the nasal structure? It may sound quirky, but the exhibit honors a little-known scientific wonder: scientists have discovered that in under a second, the reindeer's nose can warm the ambient air it takes in by 80 degrees celsius, enabling the creature to endure in extreme Arctic conditions. Enlarging the nose to human-scale dimensions, Sara says, "creates a sense of insignificance that you as a person are not superior over nature." Sara is a former journalist, young adult author, and rights advocate, who is from a pastoral family in the far north of Norway. "Maybe that generates the chance to alter your viewpoint or spark some humility," she adds.

A Tribute to Traditional Ways

The labyrinthine installation is among various components in Sara's absorbing art project honoring the heritage, understanding, and philosophy of the Sámi, Europe's only Indigenous people. Semi-nomadic, the Sámi count approximately 100,000 people distributed across northern Norway, the Finnish Arctic, the Swedish Lapland, and the Russian Arctic (an territory they call Sápmi). They've faced oppression, forced assimilation, and repression of their dialect by all four countries. By focusing on the reindeer, an animal at the core of the Sámi cosmology and founding narrative, the work also highlights the group's challenges connected to the environmental emergency, land dispossession, and colonialism.

Symbolism in Elements

Along the lengthy entrance ramp, there's a looming, 26-meter sculpture of pelts entangled by electrical wires. It can be read as a metaphor for the political and economic systems constraining the Sámi. Like an electrical tower, part celestial ladder, this component of the exhibit, titled Goavve-, points to the Sámi word for an extreme weather phenomenon, in which dense coatings of ice develop as varying temperatures thaw and solidify again the snow, locking in the reindeers' key cold-season nourishment, fungus. The condition is a outcome of global heating, which is taking place up to much more rapidly in the Arctic than globally.

Three years ago, I visited Sara in Guovdageaidnu during a icy season and went with Sámi herders on their Arctic vehicles in freezing temperatures as they transported trailers of animal nutrition on to the exposed frozen landscape to dispense manually. The herd gathered round us, scratching the frozen ground in vain for vegetative morsels. This expensive and laborious procedure is having a significant impact on herding practices—and on the animals' independence. Yet the other option is death. As these icy periods become routine, reindeer are dying—a number from lack of food, others suffocating after plunging into lakes and rivers through prematurely melting ice. In a sense, the work is a tribute to them. "With the layering of elements, in a way I'm bringing the phenomenon to London," says Sara.

Opposing Perspectives

This artwork also highlights the stark divergence between the modern understanding of power as a resource to be utilized for economic benefit and livelihood and the Sámi worldview of vitality as an inherent essence in creatures, people, and the environment. Tate Modern's history as a coal and oil power station is connected to this, as is what the Sámi view as environmental exploitation by regional governments. In their efforts to be exemplars for sustainable power, Scandinavian countries have locked horns with the Sámi over the building of windfarms, river barriers, and mines on their ancestral land; the Sámi assert their fundamental freedoms, livelihoods, and traditions are threatened. "It's very difficult being such a limited population to defend yourself when the justifications are rooted in global sustainability," Sara comments. "Extractivism has co-opted the discourse of ecology, but nonetheless it's just striving to find more suitable ways to persist in practices of use."

Family Conflicts

The artist and her family have personally disagreed with the Norwegian government over its ever-stricter policies on reindeer management. A few years ago, Sara's sibling initiated a set of ultimately unsuccessful legal cases over the forced culling of his animals, supposedly to stop vegetation depletion. In support, Sara produced a extended collection of artworks named Pile O'Sápmi comprising a colossal drape of 400 cranial remains, which was shown at the 2017 art exhibition Documenta 14 and later acquired by the National Museum of Oslo, where it hangs in the entryway.

The Role of Art in Advocacy

For numerous Indigenous people, art is the exclusive realm in which they can be listened to by the global community. Recently, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|