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Guests to Tate Modern are accustomed to unexpected displays in its expansive Turbine Hall. They've relaxed under an simulated sun, slid down helter skelters, and observed automated jellyfish hovering through the air. However this marks the initial time they will be engaging themselves in the intricate nose cavities of a reindeer. The latest artist commission for this cavernous space—designed by Native Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—invites patrons into a maze-like construction inspired by the expanded inside of a reindeer's nose airways. Inside, they can wander around or chill out on pelts, listening on headphones to tribal seniors imparting tales and insights.

Focus on the Nasal Passages

What's the focus on the nose? It may appear quirky, but the exhibit celebrates a rarely recognized biological feat: researchers have uncovered that in under a second, the reindeer's nose can raise the temperature of the ambient air it breathes in by 80 degrees celsius, allowing the animal to thrive in inhospitable Arctic climates. Scaling the nose to larger than human size, Sara says, "generates a sense of inferiority that you as a individual are not dominant over nature." The artist is a former reporter, children's author, and environmental activist, who hails from a herding family in the far north of Norway. "Possibly that generates the potential to alter your outlook or trigger some modesty," she continues.

An Homage to Sámi Culture

The labyrinthine design is among various features in Sara's absorbing commission celebrating the culture, understanding, and philosophy of the Sámi, the sole native group in Europe. Semi-nomadic, the Sámi total approximately 100,000 people spread across the Norwegian north, Finland, the Swedish Lapland, and Russia's Kola Peninsula (an territory they call Sápmi). They have faced persecution, cultural suppression, and repression of their dialect by all four states. Through highlighting the reindeer, an animal at the center of the Sámi belief system and founding narrative, the work also highlights the group's issues associated with the global warming, loss of territory, and colonialism.

Symbolism in Elements

Along the lengthy access ramp, there's a looming, 26-metre formation of skins ensnared by power and light cables. It can be read as a analogy for the societal frameworks restricting the Sámi. Part pylon, part celestial ladder, this component of the installation, named Goavve-, points to the Sámi name for an severe climatic event, in which solid sheets of ice appear as fluctuating temperatures liquefy and ice over the snow, locking in the reindeers' main winter food, lichen. Goavvi is a consequence of global heating, which is occurring up to at an accelerated rate in the Polar region than elsewhere.

Previously, I traveled to see Sara in Guovdageaidnu during a severe cold period and joined Sámi reindeer keepers on their Arctic vehicles in chilly conditions as they transported carts of food pellets on to the exposed frozen landscape to distribute through labor. These animals crowded round us, pawing the icy ground in vain attempts for vegetative morsels. This expensive and laborious process is having a significant influence on reindeer husbandry—and on the animals' self-sufficiency. But the other option is death. When such conditions become frequent, reindeer are perishing—a number from starvation, others suffocating after sinking in lakes and rivers through unstable frozen surfaces. To some extent, the installation is a tribute to them. "Through the stacking of materials, in a way I'm bringing the condition to London," says Sara.

Diverging Belief Systems

The sculpture also highlights the clear contrast between the industrial interpretation of power as a commodity to be utilized for gain and survival and the Sámi worldview of life force as an innate life force in animals, individuals, and land. This venue's past as a coal and oil power station is linked with this, as is what the Sámi view as green colonialism by Scandinavian states. In their efforts to be exemplars for renewable energy, Scandinavian countries have locked horns with the Sámi over the construction of windfarms, river barriers, and digging operations on their native soil; the Sámi assert their fundamental freedoms, livelihoods, and culture are endangered. "It's very difficult being such a tiny group to stand your ground when the arguments are rooted in saving the world," Sara notes. "Extractivism has appropriated the language of environmentalism, but nonetheless it's just attempting to find more suitable ways to maintain patterns of consumption."

Individual Conflicts

She and her kin have themselves disagreed with the state authorities over its increasingly stringent rules on animal husbandry. A few years ago, Sara's sibling initiated a sequence of unsuccessful court actions over the forced culling of his livestock, supposedly to stop excessive feeding. As a show of solidarity, Sara created a multi-year series of creations named Pile O'Sápmi including a colossal drape of 400 animal bones, which was exhibited at the 2017's event Documenta 14 and later purchased by the national institution, where it hangs in the lobby.

Art as Awareness

Among the community, visual expression seems the only domain in which they can be understood by the global community. In 2022, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|