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Guests to Tate Modern are accustomed to unexpected displays in its expansive Turbine Hall. They've sunbathed under an simulated sun, glided down spiral slides, and witnessed robotic jellyfish drifting through the air. Yet this marks the initial time they will be immersing themselves in the intricate nose chambers of a reindeer. The current artistic project for this immense space—designed by Indigenous Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—invites gallerygoers into a maze-like construction inspired by the scaled-up inside of a reindeer's nose airways. Once inside, they can stroll around or chill out on skins, listening on headphones to community leaders sharing tales and wisdom.

Focus on the Nasal Passages

Why the nose? It could seem quirky, but the installation honors a rarely recognized scientific wonder: experts have discovered that in less than one second, the reindeer's nose can heat the surrounding air it inhales by 80 degrees celsius, enabling the animal to survive in inhospitable Arctic climates. Enlarging the nose to larger than human size, Sara says, "creates a sense of insignificance that you as a individual are not superior over nature." She is a ex- reporter, young adult author, and rights advocate, who is from a reindeer-herding family in northern Norway. "Perhaps that fosters the potential to shift your perspective or trigger some modesty," she continues.

A Tribute to Indigenous Heritage

The winding structure is part of a elements in Sara's absorbing art project celebrating the heritage, understanding, and beliefs of the Sámi, Europe's only Indigenous people. Semi-nomadic, the Sámi count about 100,000 people ranged across the Norwegian north, Finland, the Swedish Lapland, and Russia's Kola Peninsula (an territory they call Sápmi). They've experienced oppression, cultural suppression, and eradication of their tongue by all four countries. By focusing on the reindeer, an creature at the core of the Sámi belief system and founding narrative, the art also highlights the community's issues relating to the environmental emergency, land dispossession, and external control.

Symbolism in Components

On the lengthy entrance incline, there's a looming, 26-metre formation of skins entangled by power and light cables. It represents a metaphor for the societal frameworks constraining the Sámi. Part pylon, part heavenly staircase, this component of the exhibit, titled Goavve-, refers to the Sámi name for an extreme weather phenomenon, in which solid sheets of ice form as changing weather thaw and solidify again the snow, encasing the reindeers' key winter nourishment, lichen. The condition is a result of climate change, which is happening up to four times faster in the Arctic than elsewhere.

Previously, I met with Sara in Guovdageaidnu during a icy season and accompanied Sámi pastoralists on their motorized sleds in chilly conditions as they transported containers of animal nutrition on to the barren frozen landscape to dispense by hand. The reindeer crowded round us, digging the slippery ground in vain for mossy bits. This costly and labour-intensive process is having a significant influence on reindeer husbandry—and on the animals' self-sufficiency. Yet the other option is malnutrition. As these icy periods become routine, reindeer are succumbing—some from hunger, others suffocating after plunging into water bodies through prematurely melting ice. On one level, the art is a monument to them. "By overlapping of components, in a way I'm introducing the condition to London," says Sara.

Opposing Perspectives

The sculpture also underscores the clear divergence between the western view of energy as a asset to be utilized for gain and existence and the Sámi worldview of energy as an natural power in creatures, people, and land. The gallery's legacy as a coal and oil power station is tied up in this, as is what the Sámi consider environmental exploitation by Scandinavian states. While attempting to be standard bearers for clean sources, Scandinavian countries have locked horns with the Sámi over the construction of windfarms, river barriers, and digging operations on their traditional territory; the Sámi argue their fundamental freedoms, livelihoods, and traditions are endangered. "It's hard being such a limited population to defend yourself when the justifications are grounded in environmental protection," Sara observes. "Resource exploitation has adopted the rhetoric of sustainability, but nonetheless it's just attempting to find more suitable ways to maintain habits of expenditure."

Family Struggles

She and her family have themselves conflicted with the Norwegian government over its tightening regulations on herding. A few years ago, Sara's sibling undertook a sequence of finally failed court actions over the forced culling of his livestock, ostensibly to stop vegetation depletion. In support, Sara developed a extended collection of artworks named Pile O'Sápmi featuring a colossal screen of numerous animal bones, which was displayed at the 2017's art exhibition Documenta 14 and later obtained by the National Museum of Oslo, where it is displayed in the lobby.

The Role of Art in Awareness

Among the community, visual expression is 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|