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Guests to Tate Modern are used to unusual experiences in its expansive Turbine Hall. They have sunbathed under an artificial sun, glided down helter skelters, and seen automated sea creatures hovering through the air. Yet this marks the initial time they will be immersing themselves in the intricate nose passages of a reindeer. The latest artistic project for this immense space—designed by Indigenous Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—encourages patrons into a labyrinthine design inspired by the expanded inside of a reindeer's nose airways. Upon entering, they can meander around or chill out on skins, listening on headphones to community leaders sharing stories and wisdom.

Focus on the Nasal Passages

Why the nose? It could appear playful, but the exhibit celebrates a rarely recognized scientific wonder: experts have uncovered that in a fraction of a second, the reindeer's nose can warm the ambient air it breathes in by 80 degrees celsius, enabling the animal to endure in harsh Arctic conditions. Expanding the nose to bigger than a person, Sara explains, "generates a sense of inferiority that you as a individual are not in control over nature." The artist is a ex- journalist, writer for kids, and rights advocate, who comes from a pastoral family in the far north of Norway. "Possibly that fosters the possibility to change your perspective or evoke some modesty," she states.

A Tribute to Traditional Ways

The labyrinthine structure is among various features in Sara's engaging commission honoring the culture, knowledge, and beliefs of the Sámi, the sole native group in Europe. Partially migratory, the Sámi total roughly 100,000 people spread across the Norwegian north, Finland, the Swedish Lapland, and the Kola region (an region they call Sápmi). They have faced persecution, cultural suppression, and eradication of their language by all four states. Through highlighting the reindeer, an animal at the heart of the Sámi belief system and founding narrative, the art also spotlights the community's issues connected to the global warming, loss of territory, and colonialism.

Symbolism in Materials

On the long entrance ramp, there's a looming, 26-meter structure of pelts trapped by utility lines. It serves as a metaphor for the political and economic systems constraining the Sámi. Part pylon, part celestial ladder, this part of the artwork, named Goavve-, refers to the Sámi name for an extreme weather phenomenon, wherein dense sheets of ice develop as changing temperatures liquefy and ice over the snow, trapping the reindeers' primary cold-season food, lichen. The condition is a outcome of planetary warming, which is occurring up to four times faster in the Far North than globally.

A few years back, I met with Sara in the Norwegian far north during a icy season and went with Sámi reindeer keepers on their motorized sleds in biting cold as they hauled carts of supplementary feed on to the wind-scoured frozen landscape to dispense by hand. The herd gathered round us, pawing the frozen ground in vain attempts for vegetative bits. This resource-intensive and labour-intensive method is having a severe effect on animal rearing—and on the animals' independence. However the alternative is starvation. As these icy periods become routine, reindeer are succumbing—some from lack of food, others drowning after falling into water bodies through thinning ice sheets. On one level, the art is a monument to them. "By overlapping of elements, in a way I'm transporting the phenomenon to London," says Sara.

Diverging Worldviews

This artwork also underscores the clear divergence between the western interpretation of energy as a asset to be exploited for economic benefit and existence and the Sámi philosophy of life force as an innate power in animals, individuals, and nature. This venue's legacy as a industrial facility is tied up in this, as is what the Sámi consider green colonialism by Scandinavian states. In their efforts to be exemplars for renewable energy, Nordic nations have clashed with the Sámi over the building of wind energy projects, water power facilities, and mines on their traditional territory; the Sámi contend their legal protections, ways of life, and culture are at risk. "It's challenging being such a small minority to protect your rights when the justifications are based on saving the world," Sara comments. "Mining practices has co-opted the rhetoric of ecology, but yet it's just striving to find more suitable ways to continue habits of use."

Family Challenges

She and her relatives have personally disagreed with the Norwegian government over its tightening rules on reindeer management. Previously, Sara's sibling embarked on a sequence of finally failed legal cases over the required reduction of his livestock, apparently to stop excessive feeding. In support, Sara developed a multi-year series of creations titled Pile O'Sápmi comprising a massive screen of four hundred cranial remains, which was exhibited at the 2017 art exhibition Documenta 14 and later obtained by the National Museum of Oslo, where it is displayed in the entryway.

Creative Expression as Advocacy

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