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Guests to Tate Modern are familiar to unusual displays in its spacious Turbine Hall. They've basked under an simulated sun, glided down amusement rides, and seen AI-powered sea creatures floating through the air. But this marks the initial time they will be immersing themselves in the detailed nose chambers of a reindeer. The newest creative installation for this huge space—created by Native Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—welcomes gallerygoers into a winding construction based on the scaled-up interior of a reindeer's nose passages. Inside, they can wander around or unwind on skins, tuning in on headphones to Sámi elders telling stories and knowledge.

The Significance of the Nose

Why choose the nasal structure? It might seem whimsical, but the installation honors a obscure natural marvel: experts have discovered that in less than one second, the reindeer's nose can heat the ambient air it breathes in by 80°C, allowing the creature to endure in harsh Arctic temperatures. Enlarging the nose to bigger than a person, Sara notes, "generates a perception of smallness that you as a human being are not dominant over nature." She is a ex- reporter, children's author, and rights advocate, who hails from a pastoral family in the Norwegian Arctic. "Perhaps that creates the potential to alter your viewpoint or trigger some humbleness," she adds.

An Homage to Traditional Ways

The maze-like design is part of a components in Sara's engaging commission honoring the culture, understanding, and beliefs of the Sámi, the continent's original inhabitants. Traditionally mobile, the Sámi number about 100,000 people spread across the Norwegian north, Finland, Sweden, and the Kola region (an region they call Sápmi). They've endured discrimination, integration policies, and suppression of their language by all four states. With an emphasis on the reindeer, an creature at the heart of the Sámi belief system and creation story, the work also draws attention to the community's struggles relating to the climate crisis, property rights, and imperialism.

Meaning in Materials

On the long entry incline, there's a towering, 26-meter formation of skins trapped by power and light cables. It can be read as a metaphor for the political and economic systems restricting the Sámi. Like an electrical tower, part celestial ladder, this section of the installation, named Goavve-, relates to the Sámi name for an severe climatic event, in which dense layers of ice appear as fluctuating conditions liquefy and ice over the snow, locking in the reindeers' main cold-season nourishment, fungus. This phenomenon is a result of planetary warming, which is happening up to at an accelerated rate in the Polar region than globally.

A few years back, I visited Sara in a remote town during a severe cold period and accompanied Sámi herders on their Arctic vehicles in freezing temperatures as they carried carts of animal nutrition on to the exposed tundra to dispense manually. The herd surrounded round us, scratching the frozen ground in vain attempts for lichen-covered bits. This expensive and labour-intensive process is having a severe impact on animal rearing—and on the animals' independence. But the alternative is malnutrition. As these icy periods become frequent, reindeer are dying—a number from lack of food, others drowning after sinking in streams through unstable frozen surfaces. To some extent, the installation is a tribute to them. "Through the stacking of elements, in a way I'm introducing the condition to London," says Sara.

Opposing Worldviews

This artwork also emphasizes the clear divergence between the modern interpretation of energy as a resource to be utilized for profit and existence and the Sámi worldview of energy as an natural life force in creatures, humans, and nature. Tate Modern's past as a fossil fuel plant is linked with this, as is what the Sámi consider green colonialism by Nordic countries. While attempting to be exemplars for clean sources, Nordic nations have disagreed with the Sámi over the construction of turbine fields, water power facilities, and digging operations on their traditional territory; the Sámi argue their fundamental freedoms, ways of life, and way of life are threatened. "It's hard being such a limited population to protect your rights when the reasons are based on global sustainability," Sara observes. "Resource exploitation has co-opted the rhetoric of environmentalism, but still it's just striving to find better ways to continue practices of expenditure."

Family Struggles

Sara and her family have personally conflicted with the Norwegian government over its increasingly stringent rules on herding. In 2016, Sara's brother undertook a set of ultimately unsuccessful lawsuits over the forced culling of his herd, ostensibly to stop excessive feeding. To back him, Sara developed a multi-year set of creations called Pile O'Sápmi featuring a colossal screen of 400 reindeer skulls, which was exhibited at the the show Documenta 14 and later obtained by the national institution, where it is displayed in the entrance.

Creative Expression as Activism

For numerous Indigenous people, art appears the only realm in which they can be listened to by outsiders. Two years ago, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|