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Guests to Tate Modern are accustomed to surprising experiences in its expansive Turbine Hall. They've relaxed under an simulated sun, glided down spiral slides, and seen robotic sea creatures drifting through the air. But this marks the first time they will be venturing themselves in the detailed nasal cavities of a reindeer. The newest artistic project for this huge space—developed by Indigenous Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—encourages visitors into a winding structure modeled after the expanded interior of a reindeer's nose cavities. Once inside, they can meander around or unwind on pelts, listening on headphones to Sámi elders telling stories and insights.

The Significance of the Nose

Why choose the nasal structure? It may seem quirky, but the exhibit pays tribute to a little-known natural marvel: experts have uncovered that in a fraction of a second, the reindeer's nose can raise the temperature of the incoming air it inhales by 80 degrees celsius, enabling the animal to endure in extreme Arctic conditions. Expanding the nose to human-scale dimensions, Sara notes, "generates a perception of inferiority that you as a human being are not in control over nature." Sara is a ex- writer, children's author, and land defender, who comes from a herding family in northern Norway. "Perhaps that fosters the chance to shift your perspective or spark some humility," she adds.

A Tribute to Sámi Culture

The labyrinthine installation is one of several elements in Sara's immersive commission celebrating the culture, science, and philosophy of the Sámi, Europe's only Indigenous people. Semi-nomadic, the Sámi count approximately 100,000 people distributed across northern Norway, the Finnish Arctic, the Swedish Lapland, and the Kola region (an area they call Sápmi). They have endured persecution, forced assimilation, and repression of their dialect by all four nations. By focusing on the reindeer, an creature at the heart of the Sámi cosmology and founding narrative, the installation also highlights the people's struggles connected to the global warming, loss of territory, and colonialism.

Symbolism in Materials

At the long access slope, there's a soaring, 26-meter formation of reindeer hides ensnared by power and light cables. It can be read as a analogy for the societal frameworks restricting the Sámi. Partly a utility pole, part celestial ladder, this part of the installation, called Goavve-, relates to the Sámi name for an extreme weather phenomenon, wherein thick coatings of ice develop as varying temperatures liquefy and solidify again the snow, locking in the reindeers' main cold-season sustenance, fungus. Goavvi is a consequence of climate change, which is occurring up to four times faster in the Far North than in other regions.

Previously, I traveled to see Sara in a remote town during a goavvi winter and joined Sámi pastoralists on their motorized sleds in freezing temperatures as they transported containers of food pellets on to the barren tundra to provide through labor. These animals crowded round us, digging the frozen ground in vain attempts for lichen-covered morsels. This resource-intensive and demanding method is having a drastic effect on herding practices—and on the animals' self-sufficiency. But the choice is death. As goavvi winters become commonplace, reindeer are dying—a number from starvation, others drowning after plunging into lakes and rivers through thinning ice sheets. In a sense, the work is a monument to them. "By overlapping of components, in a way I'm bringing the phenomenon to London," says Sara.

Opposing Worldviews

The installation also underscores the sharp contrast between the western interpretation of electricity as a resource to be harnessed for economic benefit and livelihood and the Sámi outlook of life force as an natural power in creatures, individuals, and land. Tate Modern's history as a fossil fuel plant is linked with this, as is what the Sámi view as environmental exploitation by Scandinavian states. In their efforts to be standard bearers for clean sources, Nordic nations have clashed with the Sámi over the construction of turbine fields, hydroelectric dams, and extraction sites on their traditional territory; the Sámi contend their fundamental freedoms, livelihoods, and culture are threatened. "It's very difficult being such a tiny group to defend yourself when the reasons are based on saving the world," Sara notes. "Mining practices has appropriated the language of ecology, but nonetheless it's just attempting to find more suitable ways to persist in habits of consumption."

Individual Struggles

She and her kin have personally conflicted with the state authorities over its tightening policies on animal husbandry. Previously, Sara's sibling embarked on a sequence of finally failed lawsuits over the required reduction of his animals, supposedly to stop vegetation depletion. As a show of solidarity, Sara developed a extended collection of artworks called Pile O'Sápmi featuring a colossal curtain of 400 reindeer skulls, which was shown at the 2017's art exhibition Documenta 14 and later acquired by the National Museum of Oslo, where it hangs in the entrance.

Art as Activism

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