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Guests to Tate Modern are familiar to unusual experiences in its expansive Turbine Hall. They have sunbathed under an simulated sun, descended down helter skelters, and observed AI-powered sea creatures hovering through the air. Yet this marks the inaugural time they will be immersing themselves in the detailed nasal cavities of a reindeer. The newest artistic project for this cavernous space—designed by Indigenous Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—welcomes gallerygoers into a labyrinthine structure modeled after the expanded inside of a reindeer's nose cavities. Once inside, they can wander around or unwind on skins, tuning in on headphones to Sámi elders sharing narratives and wisdom.

Why the Nose?

What's the focus on the nose? It may sound whimsical, but the installation celebrates a obscure scientific wonder: researchers have found that in under a second, the reindeer's nose can warm the ambient air it breathes in by 80 degrees celsius, enabling the creature to survive in harsh Arctic temperatures. Expanding the nose to human-scale dimensions, Sara notes, "produces a feeling of smallness that you as a human being are not superior over nature." She is a ex- writer, children's author, and environmental activist, who hails from a herding family in northern Norway. "Perhaps that creates the chance to shift your viewpoint or trigger some humbleness," she continues.

A Celebration to Indigenous Heritage

The labyrinthine design is among various components in Sara's engaging exhibition celebrating the heritage, understanding, and worldview of the Sámi, the sole native group in Europe. Partially migratory, the Sámi total approximately 100,000 people spread across the Norwegian north, Finland, Sweden, and Russia's Kola Peninsula (an territory they call Sápmi). They've experienced oppression, cultural suppression, and suppression of their language by all four states. With an emphasis on the reindeer, an animal at the core of the Sámi cosmology and origin tale, the installation also draws attention to the people's challenges associated with the climate crisis, property rights, and colonialism.

Meaning in Elements

Along the long access slope, there's a looming, 26-meter sculpture of reindeer hides ensnared by power and light cables. It serves as a analogy for the societal frameworks limiting the Sámi. Like an electrical tower, part spiritual ascent, this component of the artwork, called Goavve-, points to the Sámi word for an harsh environmental condition, whereby solid coatings of ice form as changing conditions liquefy and solidify again the snow, trapping the reindeers' main cold-season nourishment, lichen. This phenomenon is a result of global heating, which is occurring up to four times faster in the Arctic than globally.

Previously, I met with Sara in Guovdageaidnu during a severe cold period and accompanied Sámi herders on their motorized sleds in freezing temperatures as they hauled carts of food pellets on to the exposed frozen landscape to provide by hand. The reindeer crowded round us, scratching the slippery ground in vain for mossy bits. This costly and laborious process is having a significant effect on herding practices—and on the animals' self-sufficiency. But the other option is malnutrition. When such conditions become routine, reindeer are dying—some from hunger, others drowning after plunging into water bodies through unstable frozen surfaces. In a sense, the work is a memorial to them. "Through the stacking of elements, in a way I'm transporting the condition to London," says Sara.

Opposing Belief Systems

This artwork also highlights the stark contrast between the industrial understanding of electricity as a commodity to be exploited for profit and survival and the Sámi outlook of vitality as an natural power in animals, humans, and the environment. Tate Modern's past as a industrial facility is linked with this, as is what the Sámi consider eco-imperialism by regional governments. While attempting to be exemplars for sustainable power, Scandinavian countries have disagreed with the Sámi over the construction of wind energy projects, hydroelectric dams, and extraction sites on their ancestral land; the Sámi contend their fundamental freedoms, livelihoods, and way of life are endangered. "It's challenging being such a tiny group to stand your ground when the justifications are grounded in saving the world," Sara observes. "Resource exploitation has appropriated the discourse of sustainability, but still it's just aiming to find better ways to continue habits of expenditure."

Individual Conflicts

She and her family have personally conflicted with the state authorities over its tightening rules on animal husbandry. A few years ago, Sara's brother embarked on a sequence of ultimately unsuccessful lawsuits over the required reduction of his herd, ostensibly to stop overgrazing. As a show of solidarity, Sara produced a extended set of artworks called Pile O'Sápmi comprising a massive screen of numerous cranial remains, which was shown at the the event Documenta 14 and later acquired by the national institution, where it resides in the lobby.

Creative Expression as Activism

For numerous Indigenous people, art appears the exclusive realm in which they can be listened to by the global community. Recently, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|