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Attendees to Tate Modern are used to unexpected encounters in its vast Turbine Hall. They've sunbathed under an man-made sun, slid down spiral slides, and witnessed AI-powered sea creatures floating through the air. Yet this marks the initial time they will be immersing themselves in the complex nose chambers of a reindeer. The latest artist commission for this huge space—created by Native Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—welcomes gallerygoers into a winding structure based on the enlarged inside of a reindeer's nasal passages. Upon entering, they can wander around or relax on pelts, listening on earphones to community leaders imparting tales and insights.

Why the Nose?

What's the focus on the nose? It might appear quirky, but the exhibit celebrates a obscure scientific wonder: scientists have discovered that in a fraction of a second, the reindeer's nose can raise the temperature of the incoming air it breathes in by eighty degrees, enabling the creature to survive in harsh Arctic temperatures. Scaling the nose to bigger than a person, Sara notes, "generates a perception of insignificance that you as a human being are not superior over nature." She is a ex- reporter, young adult author, and environmental activist, who is from a pastoral family in the far north of Norway. "Possibly that generates the chance to shift your outlook or evoke some modesty," she adds.

A Tribute to Indigenous Heritage

The maze-like installation is among various components in Sara's absorbing exhibition celebrating the culture, understanding, and beliefs of the Sámi, the sole native group in Europe. Partially migratory, the Sámi count approximately 100,000 people distributed across the Norwegian north, Finland, the Swedish Lapland, and the Russian Arctic (an territory they call Sápmi). They've faced persecution, forced assimilation, and suppression of their tongue by all four nations. With an emphasis on the reindeer, an creature at the heart of the Sámi cosmology and creation story, the work also spotlights the community's challenges relating to the global warming, land dispossession, and external control.

Metaphor in Components

Along the extended access slope, there's a looming, eighty-five-foot sculpture of reindeer hides ensnared by electrical wires. It represents a symbol for the societal frameworks limiting the Sámi. Part pylon, part heavenly staircase, this part of the exhibit, called Goavve-, points to the Sámi word for an severe climatic event, whereby dense coatings of ice appear as changing conditions liquefy and solidify again the snow, trapping the reindeers' key cold-season food, lichen. The condition is a outcome of planetary warming, which is happening up to four times faster in the Far North than globally.

A few years back, I visited Sara in Guovdageaidnu during a goavvi winter and went with Sámi pastoralists on their Arctic vehicles in freezing temperatures as they hauled trailers of food pellets on to the barren frozen landscape to dispense by hand. The reindeer surrounded round us, pawing the icy ground in futility for vegetative morsels. This expensive and labour-intensive procedure is having a significant impact on animal rearing—and on the animals' self-sufficiency. However the other option is starvation. As these icy periods become routine, reindeer are succumbing—some from hunger, others submerging after sinking in lakes and rivers through thinning ice sheets. On one level, the art is a tribute to them. "Through the stacking of components, in a way I'm bringing the goavvi to London," says Sara.

Contrasting Belief Systems

The sculpture also underscores the sharp contrast between the modern interpretation of electricity as a commodity to be exploited for gain and survival and the Sámi philosophy of energy as an natural power in creatures, individuals, and land. This venue's legacy as a coal and oil power station is tied up in this, as is what the Sámi see as environmental exploitation by regional governments. In their efforts to be leaders for renewable energy, Scandinavian countries have disagreed with the Sámi over the development of windfarms, river barriers, and extraction sites on their traditional territory; the Sámi argue their legal protections, incomes, and culture are endangered. "It's hard being such a limited population to defend yourself when the justifications are rooted in saving the world," Sara comments. "Mining practices has co-opted the discourse of environmentalism, but yet it's just striving to find alternative ways to continue practices of consumption."

Individual Conflicts

Sara and her relatives have themselves disagreed with the Norwegian government over its ever-stricter regulations on animal husbandry. In 2016, Sara's brother initiated a sequence of finally failed lawsuits over the required reduction of his livestock, ostensibly to stop overgrazing. To back him, Sara produced a multi-year set of creations called Pile O'Sápmi including a massive drape of numerous cranial remains, which was displayed at the 2017's art exhibition Documenta 14 and later acquired by the national institution, where it resides in the entrance.

Creative Expression as Activism

For many Sámi, creative work appears the exclusive realm in which they can be heard by people of other nations. In 2022, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|