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Guests to Tate Modern are familiar to unusual displays in its expansive Turbine Hall. They've basked under an simulated sun, descended down amusement rides, and witnessed AI-powered sea creatures hovering through the air. Yet this marks the first time they will be engaging themselves in the intricate nose passages of a reindeer. The newest creative installation for this immense space—developed by Native Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—invites patrons into a winding design modeled after the scaled-up inside of a reindeer's nose cavities. Once inside, they can wander around or unwind on reindeer hides, tuning in on earphones to community leaders telling narratives and knowledge.

The Significance of the Nose

Why the nose? It may appear whimsical, but the artwork celebrates a rarely recognized biological feat: scientists have found that in under a second, the reindeer's nose can raise the temperature of the ambient air it inhales by eighty degrees, helping the creature to survive in harsh Arctic conditions. Expanding the nose to human-scale dimensions, Sara says, "produces a perception of inferiority that you as a individual are not in control over nature." She is a former journalist, writer for kids, and land defender, who hails from a reindeer-herding family in the Norwegian Arctic. "Perhaps that generates the chance to change your viewpoint or spark some modesty," she adds.

A Tribute to Sámi Culture

The labyrinthine design is among various elements in Sara's engaging art project honoring the heritage, understanding, and philosophy of the Sámi, the continent's original inhabitants. Semi-nomadic, the Sámi number roughly 100,000 people ranged across the Norwegian north, the Finnish Arctic, Sweden, and Russia's Kola Peninsula (an area they call Sápmi). They've endured persecution, cultural suppression, and suppression of their dialect by all four states. By focusing on the reindeer, an animal at the heart of the Sámi cosmology and founding narrative, the installation also spotlights the community's issues associated with the global warming, loss of territory, and colonialism.

Symbolism in Components

On the long access incline, there's a towering, eighty-five-foot structure of pelts ensnared by utility lines. It can be read as a metaphor for the governance and financial structures limiting the Sámi. Part pylon, part spiritual ascent, this component of the installation, named Goavve-, refers to the Sámi term for an extreme weather phenomenon, in which thick layers of ice develop as changing conditions melt and ice over the snow, encasing the reindeers' main cold-season food, lichen. Goavvi is a outcome of climate change, which is taking place up to much more rapidly in the Far North than in other regions.

A few years back, I traveled to see Sara in Guovdageaidnu during a icy season and joined Sámi herders on their snowmobiles in freezing temperatures as they hauled containers of supplementary feed on to the barren tundra to distribute by hand. The herd crowded round us, scratching the slippery ground in futility for mossy bits. This expensive and laborious process is having a significant effect on reindeer husbandry—and on the animals' self-sufficiency. But the other option is death. As these icy periods become commonplace, reindeer are dying—some from starvation, others suffocating after sinking in streams through prematurely melting ice. In a sense, the installation is a tribute to them. "By overlapping of components, in a way I'm bringing the phenomenon to London," says Sara.

Contrasting Worldviews

The installation also underscores the stark difference between the western interpretation of energy as a asset to be harnessed for gain and survival and the Sámi outlook of energy as an inherent power in creatures, people, and nature. This venue's legacy as a fossil fuel plant is connected to this, as is what the Sámi view as green colonialism by Nordic countries. In their efforts to be exemplars for sustainable power, Nordic nations have locked horns with the Sámi over the building of windfarms, river barriers, and digging operations on their traditional territory; the Sámi contend their legal protections, incomes, and traditions are at risk. "It's very difficult being such a small minority to stand your ground when the reasons are based on environmental protection," Sara comments. "Extractivism has adopted the discourse of ecology, but yet it's just attempting to find alternative ways to continue practices of use."

Personal Challenges

She and her family have personally clashed with the national administration over its increasingly stringent regulations on animal husbandry. A few years ago, Sara's sibling embarked on a series of unsuccessful court actions over the mandatory slaughter of his livestock, supposedly to stop overgrazing. As a show of solidarity, Sara produced a multi-year collection of creations titled Pile O'Sápmi featuring a massive curtain of 400 cranial remains, which was displayed at the 2017's show Documenta 14 and later purchased by the National Museum of Oslo, where it is displayed in the entrance.

The Role of Art in Advocacy

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