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Visitors to Tate Modern are used to surprising displays in its expansive Turbine Hall. They've sunbathed under an artificial sun, descended down helter skelters, and witnessed robotic jellyfish drifting through the air. Yet this marks the inaugural time they will be engaging themselves in the detailed nasal chambers of a reindeer. The current creative installation for this huge space—developed by Native Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—invites visitors into a winding design modeled after the expanded interior of a reindeer's nasal airways. Once inside, they can stroll around or relax on pelts, tuning in on earphones to community leaders sharing tales and wisdom.

The Significance of the Nose

Why choose the nasal structure? It might sound quirky, but the exhibit pays tribute to a little-known natural marvel: scientists have found 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 animal to thrive in extreme Arctic conditions. Enlarging the nose to larger than human size, Sara notes, "generates a feeling of inferiority that you as a person are not dominant over nature." She is a ex- journalist, young adult author, and land defender, who is from a reindeer-herding family in the Norwegian Arctic. "Possibly that creates the possibility to alter your outlook or spark some humility," she continues.

A Celebration to Indigenous Heritage

The maze-like installation is one of several components in Sara's immersive exhibition showcasing the heritage, understanding, and beliefs of the Sámi, the sole native group in Europe. Partially migratory, the Sámi number roughly 100,000 people distributed across northern Norway, Finland, the Swedish Lapland, and the Kola region (an region they call Sápmi). They have experienced oppression, integration policies, and suppression of their language by all four states. Through highlighting the reindeer, an creature at the core of the Sámi belief system and creation story, the art also draws attention to the community's challenges connected to the global warming, property rights, and imperialism.

Metaphor in Components

At the extended entry slope, there's a towering, 26-meter sculpture of pelts trapped by utility lines. It serves as a symbol for the governance and financial structures constraining the Sámi. Like an electrical tower, part celestial ladder, this component of the artwork, named Goavve-, points to the Sámi name for an extreme weather phenomenon, whereby solid coatings of ice appear as varying temperatures thaw and ice over the snow, locking in the reindeers' primary cold-season nourishment, lichen. Goavvi is a consequence of global heating, which is occurring up to four times faster in the Arctic than in other regions.

A few years back, I traveled to see Sara in a remote town during a severe cold period and joined Sámi herders on their Arctic vehicles in freezing temperatures as they hauled containers of supplementary feed on to the barren tundra to distribute by hand. The reindeer gathered round us, pawing the icy ground in vain for vegetative bits. This expensive and demanding procedure is having a drastic effect on animal rearing—and on the animals' self-sufficiency. Yet the choice is death. As these icy periods become commonplace, reindeer are succumbing—a number from lack of food, others suffocating after sinking in water bodies through thinning ice sheets. To some extent, the art is a tribute to them. "Through the stacking of materials, in a way I'm bringing the goavvi to London," says Sara.

Contrasting Worldviews

The sculpture also emphasizes the sharp divergence between the modern understanding of energy as a resource to be utilized for profit and existence and the Sámi philosophy of energy as an inherent power in creatures, individuals, and land. The gallery's past as a fossil fuel plant is tied up in this, as is what the Sámi view as green colonialism by Scandinavian states. In their efforts to be standard bearers for sustainable power, Scandinavian countries have locked horns with the Sámi over the development of wind energy projects, hydroelectric dams, and digging operations on their native soil; the Sámi argue their fundamental freedoms, ways of life, and culture are threatened. "It's hard being such a tiny group to defend yourself when the justifications are rooted in global sustainability," Sara notes. "Extractivism has appropriated the discourse of ecology, but still it's just aiming to find more suitable ways to continue habits of expenditure."

Personal Struggles

She and her relatives have themselves disagreed with the state authorities over its ever-stricter rules on reindeer management. In 2016, Sara's brother undertook a sequence of finally failed court actions over the mandatory slaughter of his animals, supposedly to stop vegetation depletion. In support, Sara produced a extended set of pieces called Pile O'Sápmi featuring a massive curtain of 400 animal bones, which was displayed at the 2017 art exhibition Documenta 14 and later acquired by the national institution, where it is displayed in the entrance.

Art as Awareness

For numerous Indigenous people, creative work is the exclusive domain in which they can be understood by outsiders. In 2022, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|