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Visitors to Tate Modern are used to unusual encounters in its vast Turbine Hall. They have basked under an artificial sun, slid down amusement rides, and seen robotic sea creatures floating through the air. Yet this marks the first time they will be engaging themselves in the intricate nose chambers of a reindeer. The current artist commission for this huge space—designed by Native Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—invites patrons into a winding structure based on the expanded inside of a reindeer's nasal passages. Once inside, they can stroll around or chill out on pelts, tuning in on headphones to tribal seniors telling narratives and insights.

Focus on the Nasal Passages

What's the focus on the nose? It may sound playful, but the installation pays tribute to a little-known biological feat: researchers have uncovered that in less than one second, the reindeer's nose can raise the temperature of the surrounding air it inhales by 80°C, helping the creature to survive in inhospitable Arctic temperatures. Scaling the nose to bigger than a person, Sara explains, "creates a feeling of smallness that you as a human being are not dominant over nature." She is a ex- writer, writer for kids, and environmental activist, who hails from a reindeer-herding family in the Norwegian Arctic. "Maybe that generates the chance to change your viewpoint or spark some modesty," she states.

A Tribute to Sámi Culture

The labyrinthine structure is one of several elements in Sara's immersive art project honoring the heritage, understanding, and beliefs of the Sámi, the sole native group in Europe. Partially migratory, the Sámi number approximately 100,000 people ranged across the Norwegian north, the Finnish Arctic, Sweden, and Russia's Kola Peninsula (an region they call Sápmi). They've faced persecution, cultural suppression, and suppression of their language by all four states. With an emphasis on the reindeer, an creature at the heart of the Sámi cosmology and origin tale, the installation also spotlights the people's challenges associated with the global warming, land dispossession, and colonialism.

Symbolism in Elements

Along the lengthy access slope, there's a looming, 26-meter formation of skins trapped by utility lines. It can be read as a symbol for the political and economic systems constraining the Sámi. Part pylon, part heavenly staircase, this component of the installation, called Goavve-, relates to the Sámi word for an extreme weather phenomenon, whereby solid coatings of ice develop as fluctuating temperatures melt and refreeze the snow, locking in the reindeers' key winter nourishment, lichen. The condition is a consequence of planetary warming, which is taking place up to four times faster in the Arctic than in other regions.

Previously, I met with Sara in a remote town during a icy season and went with Sámi pastoralists on their Arctic vehicles in freezing temperatures as they transported containers of animal nutrition on to the wind-scoured Arctic plains to dispense by hand. The reindeer surrounded round us, scratching the frozen ground in vain attempts for vegetative bits. This resource-intensive and laborious process is having a significant effect on reindeer husbandry—and on the animals' independence. Yet the choice is malnutrition. When such conditions become routine, reindeer are succumbing—a number from hunger, others suffocating after falling into water bodies through prematurely melting ice. On one level, the work is a memorial to them. "Through the stacking of elements, in a way I'm transporting the goavvi to London," says Sara.

Contrasting Belief Systems

The sculpture also underscores the stark contrast between the modern interpretation of electricity as a asset to be harnessed for profit and survival and the Sámi outlook of life force as an inherent power in animals, humans, and nature. Tate Modern's past as a fossil fuel plant is connected to this, as is what the Sámi consider eco-imperialism by regional governments. In their efforts to be leaders for sustainable power, Scandinavian countries have locked horns with the Sámi over the construction of windfarms, river barriers, and extraction sites on their ancestral land; the Sámi contend their legal protections, livelihoods, and culture are at risk. "It's very difficult being such a small minority to stand your ground when the arguments are based on environmental protection," Sara notes. "Mining practices has appropriated the discourse of ecology, but still it's just aiming to find more suitable ways to maintain practices of expenditure."

Personal Struggles

Sara and her kin have themselves disagreed with the state authorities over its increasingly stringent rules on animal husbandry. In 2016, Sara's brother undertook a sequence of ultimately unsuccessful court actions over the mandatory slaughter of his herd, ostensibly to stop excessive feeding. To back him, Sara developed a four-year collection of creations called Pile O'Sápmi including a colossal screen of 400 cranial remains, which was shown at the 2017's event Documenta 14 and later purchased by the public gallery, where it is displayed in the lobby.

The Role of Art in Activism

For numerous Indigenous people, creative work appears the sole domain in which they can be listened to by people of other nations. In 2022, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|