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Visitors to Tate Modern are familiar to unexpected displays in its spacious Turbine Hall. They have relaxed under an man-made sun, slid down helter skelters, and observed robotic sea creatures hovering through the air. But this marks the inaugural time they will be venturing themselves in the complex nose passages of a reindeer. The latest creative installation for this immense space—created by Indigenous Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—welcomes gallerygoers into a winding structure modeled after the expanded interior of a reindeer's nose airways. Once inside, they can wander around or relax on skins, listening on earphones to community leaders telling tales and wisdom.

The Significance of the Nose

Why choose the nasal structure? It may seem quirky, but the artwork pays tribute to a little-known natural marvel: experts 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 80 degrees celsius, helping the creature to thrive in extreme Arctic conditions. Scaling the nose to larger than human size, Sara explains, "produces a feeling of smallness that you as a person are not in control over nature." Sara is a former journalist, young adult author, and rights advocate, who hails from a pastoral family in northern Norway. "Possibly that fosters the potential to shift your perspective or spark some humbleness," she continues.

An Homage to Indigenous Heritage

The winding installation is one of several features in Sara's absorbing art project honoring the traditions, understanding, and philosophy of the Sámi, Europe's only Indigenous people. Semi-nomadic, the Sámi count roughly 100,000 people ranged across northern Norway, the Finnish Arctic, Sweden, and the Kola region (an region they call Sápmi). They have endured persecution, integration policies, and suppression of their dialect by all four nations. By focusing on the reindeer, an animal at the core of the Sámi cosmology and creation story, the work also spotlights the people's challenges associated with the climate crisis, property rights, and external control.

Metaphor in Components

On the long entry incline, there's a soaring, eighty-five-foot sculpture of reindeer hides ensnared by electrical wires. It can be read as a symbol for the societal frameworks limiting the Sámi. Part pylon, part heavenly staircase, this section of the exhibit, named Goavve-, relates to the Sámi word for an severe climatic event, whereby thick layers of ice form as changing temperatures thaw and refreeze the snow, trapping the reindeers' primary winter food, fungus. The condition is a result of global heating, which is taking place up to much more rapidly in the Arctic than elsewhere.

A few years back, I traveled to see Sara in Guovdageaidnu during a goavvi winter and joined Sámi herders on their Arctic vehicles in biting cold as they transported trailers of food pellets on to the wind-scoured Arctic plains to dispense by hand. These animals gathered round us, pawing the frozen ground in vain attempts for mossy bits. This resource-intensive and labour-intensive process is having a severe influence on animal rearing—and on the animals' independence. However the other option is malnutrition. When such conditions become commonplace, reindeer are perishing—some from starvation, others submerging after sinking in lakes and rivers through thinning ice sheets. On one level, the art is a tribute to them. "With the layering of elements, in a way I'm introducing the goavvi to London," says Sara.

Contrasting Belief Systems

The installation also highlights the sharp difference between the western understanding of energy as a resource to be harnessed for economic benefit and existence and the Sámi worldview of vitality as an natural power in creatures, individuals, and nature. The gallery's history as a coal and oil power station is connected to this, as is what the Sámi view as green colonialism by regional governments. In their efforts to be exemplars for renewable energy, these states have locked horns with the Sámi over the development of wind energy projects, water power facilities, and mines on their traditional territory; the Sámi contend their fundamental freedoms, ways of life, and traditions are at risk. "It's challenging being such a small minority to defend yourself when the reasons are grounded in global sustainability," Sara observes. "Mining practices has appropriated the discourse of sustainability, but yet it's just aiming to find more suitable ways to maintain habits of consumption."

Family Struggles

She and her relatives have personally disagreed with the national administration over its tightening policies on reindeer management. In 2016, Sara's sibling undertook a series of unsuccessful lawsuits over the forced culling of his herd, ostensibly to stop overgrazing. As a show of solidarity, Sara developed a extended collection of pieces titled Pile O'Sápmi comprising a massive curtain of 400 reindeer skulls, which was exhibited at the 2017 art exhibition Documenta 14 and later acquired by the National Museum of Oslo, where it is displayed in the entryway.

The Role of Art in Awareness

For numerous Indigenous people, visual expression is the sole domain in which they can be listened to by outsiders. Two years ago, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|