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Visitors to Tate Modern are accustomed to surprising displays in its vast Turbine Hall. They've basked under an man-made sun, glided down amusement rides, and witnessed AI-powered sea creatures floating through the air. However this marks the inaugural time they will be immersing themselves in the detailed nose chambers of a reindeer. The latest artist commission for this cavernous space—designed by Indigenous Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—encourages gallerygoers into a winding structure modeled after the expanded interior of a reindeer's nose passages. Upon entering, they can wander around or relax on pelts, listening on earphones to tribal seniors sharing narratives and wisdom.

The Significance of the Nose

What's the focus on the nose? It may appear quirky, but the artwork celebrates a little-known scientific wonder: experts have found that in less than one second, the reindeer's nose can warm the incoming air it inhales by 80°C, enabling the animal to survive in inhospitable Arctic temperatures. Scaling the nose to larger than human size, Sara says, "generates a perception of insignificance that you as a person are not in control over nature." Sara is a ex- journalist, children's author, and rights advocate, who hails from a pastoral family in the far north of Norway. "Perhaps that generates the potential to change your perspective or spark some modesty," she states.

An Homage to Indigenous Heritage

The maze-like installation is among various features in Sara's absorbing exhibition honoring the heritage, knowledge, and philosophy of the Sámi, the sole native group in Europe. Traditionally mobile, the Sámi total about 100,000 people distributed across the Norwegian north, Finland, the Swedish Lapland, and Russia's Kola Peninsula (an area they call Sápmi). They've experienced persecution, cultural suppression, and repression of their language by all four nations. By focusing on the reindeer, an creature at the heart of the Sámi belief system and creation story, the work also highlights the group's struggles relating to the climate crisis, land dispossession, and colonialism.

Meaning in Materials

On the long access ramp, there's a towering, 26-metre formation of pelts trapped by power and light cables. It can be read as a symbol for the political and economic systems restricting the Sámi. Partly a utility pole, part spiritual ascent, this component of the exhibit, titled Goavve-, relates to the Sámi name for an harsh environmental condition, whereby thick layers of ice develop as varying conditions liquefy and solidify again the snow, locking in the reindeers' main cold-season sustenance, fungus. This phenomenon is a result of planetary warming, which is happening up to at an accelerated rate in the Arctic than in other regions.

Three years ago, I visited Sara in Guovdageaidnu during a icy season and joined Sámi herders on their motorized sleds in chilly conditions as they carried trailers of animal nutrition on to the exposed Arctic plains to provide manually. These animals crowded round us, scratching the icy ground in futility for vegetative morsels. This expensive and labour-intensive process is having a significant impact on herding practices—and on the animals' independence. Yet the other option is death. As goavvi winters become routine, reindeer are dying—some from hunger, others drowning after sinking in water bodies through unstable frozen surfaces. To some extent, the work is a monument to them. "Through the stacking of components, in a way I'm introducing the goavvi to London," says Sara.

Opposing Perspectives

The installation also highlights the clear difference between the industrial view of power as a commodity to be harnessed for gain and existence and the Sámi outlook of life force as an innate power in animals, people, and nature. This venue's past as a fossil fuel plant is connected to this, as is what the Sámi view as eco-imperialism by Nordic countries. While attempting to be exemplars for clean sources, Scandinavian countries have clashed with the Sámi over the building of turbine fields, hydroelectric dams, and digging operations on their native soil; the Sámi contend their fundamental freedoms, ways of life, and culture are endangered. "It's very difficult being such a small minority to protect your rights when the reasons are grounded in global sustainability," Sara comments. "Extractivism has appropriated the language of environmentalism, but yet it's just aiming to find better ways to maintain patterns of use."

Personal Struggles

The artist and her family have personally disagreed with the national administration over its increasingly stringent policies on reindeer management. A few years ago, Sara's brother initiated a sequence of ultimately unsuccessful legal cases over the mandatory slaughter of his animals, apparently to stop excessive feeding. To back him, Sara created a four-year collection of artworks titled Pile O'Sápmi comprising a huge drape of numerous cranial remains, which was displayed at the 2017's art exhibition Documenta 14 and later obtained by the public gallery, where it is displayed in the entryway.

Creative Expression as Awareness

For numerous Indigenous people, visual expression seems the exclusive sphere in which they can be understood by outsiders. Two years ago, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|