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Visitors to Tate Modern are accustomed to unexpected displays in its expansive Turbine Hall. They have sunbathed under an man-made sun, glided down amusement rides, and seen automated jellyfish drifting through the air. But this marks the initial time they will be venturing themselves in the complex nose chambers of a reindeer. The current artist commission for this immense space—developed by Indigenous Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—welcomes gallerygoers into a maze-like design inspired by the enlarged interior of a reindeer's nasal passages. Inside, they can stroll around or chill out on skins, listening on earphones to tribal seniors imparting stories and wisdom.

Why the Nose?

Why the nose? It may appear quirky, but the artwork honors a obscure scientific wonder: experts have discovered that in less than one second, the reindeer's nose can warm the surrounding air it takes in by 80°C, helping the creature to thrive in extreme Arctic climates. Scaling the nose to larger than human size, Sara notes, "creates a perception of insignificance that you as a person are not superior over nature." Sara is a former reporter, children's author, and land defender, who hails from a reindeer-herding family in northern Norway. "Maybe that creates the chance to shift your outlook or evoke some humbleness," she continues.

A Celebration to Sámi Culture

The labyrinthine installation is one of several components in Sara's absorbing commission showcasing the traditions, understanding, and worldview of the Sámi, the sole native group in Europe. Partially migratory, the Sámi count approximately 100,000 people distributed across northern Norway, Finland, the Swedish Lapland, and the Kola region (an area they call Sápmi). They have endured discrimination, forced assimilation, and repression of their dialect by all four states. Through highlighting the reindeer, an animal at the core of the Sámi belief system and founding narrative, the work also draws attention to the community's struggles associated with the environmental emergency, loss of territory, and colonialism.

Symbolism in Materials

At the long access slope, there's a towering, 26-metre formation of pelts trapped by electrical wires. It represents a symbol for the governance and financial structures limiting the Sámi. Like an electrical tower, part heavenly staircase, this component of the artwork, named Goavve-, relates to the Sámi name for an harsh environmental condition, in which dense coatings of ice form as changing conditions thaw and refreeze the snow, encasing the reindeers' primary winter food, moss. The condition is a consequence of planetary warming, which is happening up to at an accelerated rate in the Polar region than elsewhere.

A few years back, I met with Sara in a remote town during a icy season and accompanied Sámi pastoralists on their motorized sleds in chilly conditions as they carried carts of supplementary feed on to the wind-scoured tundra to distribute through labor. The herd surrounded round us, digging the icy ground in vain attempts for vegetative bits. This resource-intensive and demanding procedure is having a drastic influence on herding practices—and on the animals' self-sufficiency. Yet the choice is starvation. As these icy periods become frequent, reindeer are perishing—some from lack of food, others submerging after falling into water bodies through unstable frozen surfaces. To some extent, the installation is a monument to them. "By overlapping of components, in a way I'm introducing the phenomenon to London," says Sara.

Opposing Belief Systems

This artwork also highlights the clear difference between the industrial view of electricity as a asset to be utilized for economic benefit and existence and the Sámi outlook of life force as an inherent essence in creatures, people, and nature. Tate Modern's past as a coal and oil power station is connected to this, as is what the Sámi see as environmental exploitation by regional governments. As they strive to be leaders for clean sources, Nordic nations have disagreed with the Sámi over the building of windfarms, water power facilities, and digging operations on their ancestral land; the Sámi assert their legal protections, ways of life, and traditions are threatened. "It's hard being such a tiny group to defend yourself when the reasons are rooted in saving the world," Sara notes. "Mining practices has co-opted the language of environmentalism, but yet it's just striving to find better ways to persist in habits of consumption."

Individual Conflicts

She and her relatives have personally conflicted with the state authorities over its ever-stricter policies on animal husbandry. In 2016, Sara's brother initiated a series of unsuccessful court actions over the forced culling of his livestock, apparently to stop overgrazing. To back him, Sara created a four-year series of artworks titled Pile O'Sápmi featuring a huge curtain of 400 animal bones, which was exhibited at the 2017's show Documenta 14 and later purchased by the national institution, where it is displayed in the lobby.

Art as Activism

For numerous Indigenous people, visual expression is the sole domain in which they can be understood by people of other nations. In 2022, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|