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Guests to Tate Modern are accustomed to unusual encounters in its spacious Turbine Hall. They've relaxed under an simulated sun, glided down amusement rides, and witnessed AI-powered sea creatures floating through the air. But this marks the initial time they will be venturing themselves in the detailed nose chambers of a reindeer. The current artist commission for this immense space—created by Native Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—encourages patrons into a winding structure based on the expanded interior of a reindeer's nose cavities. Once inside, they can meander around or relax on pelts, tuning in on headphones to Sámi elders imparting tales and insights.

Focus on the Nasal Passages

What's the focus on the nose? It might seem quirky, but the installation pays tribute to a little-known scientific wonder: experts have found that in less than one second, the reindeer's nose can raise the temperature of the ambient air it inhales by eighty degrees, enabling the creature to thrive in extreme Arctic conditions. Enlarging the nose to human-scale dimensions, Sara notes, "generates a sense of insignificance that you as a person are not dominant over nature." Sara is a former journalist, children's author, and environmental activist, who is from a herding family in the Norwegian Arctic. "Perhaps that fosters the possibility to change your viewpoint or spark some humility," she states.

A Tribute to Indigenous Heritage

The maze-like design is among various features in Sara's immersive commission honoring the heritage, science, and worldview of the Sámi, the sole native group in Europe. Semi-nomadic, the Sámi total approximately 100,000 people ranged across northern Norway, the Finnish Arctic, Sweden, and Russia's Kola Peninsula (an region they call Sápmi). They've experienced oppression, forced assimilation, and repression of their tongue by all four countries. Through highlighting the reindeer, an animal at the heart of the Sámi mythology and creation story, the installation also spotlights the people's issues associated with the climate crisis, loss of territory, and external control.

Meaning in Materials

Along the extended entry incline, there's a looming, 26-meter sculpture of reindeer hides entangled by power and light cables. It can be read as a metaphor for the societal frameworks limiting the Sámi. Partly a utility pole, part heavenly staircase, this component of the exhibit, titled Goavve-, points to the Sámi word for an harsh environmental condition, in which solid sheets of ice appear as varying conditions thaw and ice over the snow, locking in the reindeers' key cold-season nourishment, fungus. The condition is a consequence of climate change, which is occurring up to four times faster in the Polar region than globally.

Three years ago, I met with Sara in the Norwegian far north during a goavvi winter and accompanied Sámi pastoralists on their snowmobiles in freezing temperatures as they transported containers of food pellets on to the barren Arctic plains to dispense by hand. The herd gathered round us, digging the slippery ground in futility for mossy bits. This costly and labour-intensive process is having a severe influence on reindeer husbandry—and on the animals' independence. Yet the alternative is death. As goavvi winters become commonplace, reindeer are perishing—some from lack of food, others drowning after plunging into streams through unstable frozen surfaces. To some extent, the work is a monument to them. "By overlapping of components, in a way I'm transporting the phenomenon to London," says Sara.

Opposing Worldviews

This artwork also underscores the clear contrast between the western interpretation of energy as a commodity to be exploited for gain and livelihood and the Sámi outlook of life force as an inherent essence in animals, people, and land. The gallery's legacy as a industrial facility is connected to this, as is what the Sámi consider green colonialism by Nordic countries. As they strive to be exemplars for renewable energy, Nordic nations have locked horns with the Sámi over the development of windfarms, water power facilities, and extraction sites on their ancestral land; the Sámi assert their human rights, livelihoods, and culture are threatened. "It's challenging being such a limited population to protect your rights when the reasons are rooted in environmental protection," Sara notes. "Extractivism has co-opted the language of sustainability, but yet it's just attempting to find better ways to persist in practices of use."

Family Struggles

Sara and her family have personally disagreed with the state authorities over its tightening policies on animal husbandry. In 2016, Sara's brother embarked on a series of finally failed legal cases over the required reduction of his herd, apparently to stop overgrazing. To back him, Sara developed a extended collection of pieces titled Pile O'Sápmi comprising a massive screen of four hundred animal bones, which was shown at the the show Documenta 14 and later acquired by the national institution, where it resides in the entrance.

Creative Expression as Awareness

For numerous Indigenous people, visual expression seems the sole sphere in which they can be understood by people of other nations. Recently, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|