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Attendees to Tate Modern are accustomed to surprising encounters in its spacious Turbine Hall. They've sunbathed under an simulated sun, glided down helter skelters, and witnessed automated sea creatures hovering through the air. Yet this marks the initial time they will be immersing themselves in the complex nose chambers of a reindeer. The current artist commission for this cavernous space—designed by Indigenous Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—welcomes gallerygoers into a winding structure modeled after the scaled-up interior of a reindeer's nose airways. Inside, they can wander around or relax on pelts, listening on headphones to community leaders telling stories and knowledge.

The Significance of the Nose

Why the nose? It could seem whimsical, but the artwork pays tribute to a little-known scientific wonder: experts have discovered that in less than one second, the reindeer's nose can heat the surrounding air it takes in by 80°C, enabling the animal to endure in inhospitable Arctic conditions. Scaling the nose to larger than human size, Sara explains, "generates a feeling of inferiority that you as a person are not in control over nature." Sara is a former journalist, children's author, and environmental activist, who comes from a pastoral family in northern Norway. "Possibly that creates the possibility to alter your viewpoint or spark some humility," she adds.

An Homage to Indigenous Heritage

The winding installation is one of several features in Sara's engaging art project celebrating the heritage, knowledge, and worldview of the Sámi, Europe's only Indigenous people. Semi-nomadic, the Sámi total approximately 100,000 people ranged across the Norwegian north, Finland, the Swedish Lapland, and the Kola region (an region they call Sápmi). They've endured discrimination, integration policies, and repression of their language by all four states. With an emphasis on the reindeer, an animal at the center of the Sámi mythology and origin tale, the work also spotlights the people's challenges relating to the environmental emergency, loss of territory, and colonialism.

Symbolism in Materials

On the lengthy entrance slope, there's a towering, 26-metre formation of pelts trapped by electrical wires. It serves as a symbol for the political and economic systems limiting the Sámi. Part pylon, part spiritual ascent, this part of the artwork, named Goavve-, refers to the Sámi name for an harsh environmental condition, in which dense sheets of ice form as varying conditions thaw and refreeze the snow, locking in the reindeers' key cold-season nourishment, lichen. The condition is a consequence of global heating, which is occurring up to much more rapidly in the Polar region than globally.

A few years back, I traveled to see Sara in Guovdageaidnu during a severe cold period and joined Sámi reindeer keepers on their motorized sleds in biting cold as they transported containers of animal nutrition on to the barren tundra to provide through labor. These animals crowded round us, digging the frozen ground in futility for mossy pieces. This expensive and labour-intensive procedure is having a drastic effect on herding practices—and on the animals' self-sufficiency. Yet the other option is malnutrition. When such conditions become frequent, reindeer are perishing—some from hunger, others suffocating after falling into water bodies through thinning ice sheets. To some extent, the art is a memorial to them. "Through the stacking of elements, in a way I'm introducing the goavvi to London," says Sara.

Opposing Perspectives

The installation also highlights the sharp difference between the modern understanding of power as a asset to be utilized for gain and livelihood and the Sámi philosophy of life force as an natural life force in animals, people, and land. The gallery's past as a coal and oil power station is tied up in this, as is what the Sámi view as eco-imperialism by regional governments. While attempting to be leaders for clean sources, Nordic nations have locked horns with the Sámi over the construction of turbine fields, hydroelectric dams, and digging operations on their traditional territory; the Sámi argue their legal protections, incomes, and culture are at risk. "It's challenging being such a limited population to defend yourself when the justifications are rooted in global sustainability," Sara notes. "Mining practices has adopted the rhetoric of environmentalism, but still it's just attempting to find more suitable ways to continue patterns of use."

Personal Challenges

She and her relatives have themselves clashed with the state authorities over its ever-stricter rules on herding. In 2016, Sara's brother embarked on a series of ultimately unsuccessful lawsuits over the required reduction of his livestock, apparently to stop vegetation depletion. In support, Sara created a extended collection of creations named Pile O'Sápmi comprising a huge screen of four hundred animal bones, which was displayed at the 2017's event Documenta 14 and later purchased by the public gallery, where it hangs in the entryway.

The Role of Art in Advocacy

Among the community, visual expression is the sole realm in which they can be listened to by outsiders. Two years ago, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|