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Guests to Tate Modern are used to unexpected experiences in its spacious Turbine Hall. They've sunbathed under an simulated sun, glided down helter skelters, and witnessed robotic sea creatures floating through the air. But this marks the initial time they will be venturing themselves in the intricate nasal passages of a reindeer. The current creative installation for this huge space—designed by Native Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—welcomes gallerygoers into a labyrinthine design based on the expanded interior of a reindeer's nasal airways. Upon entering, they can meander around or chill out on pelts, tuning in on headphones to community leaders imparting stories and wisdom.

The Significance of the Nose

Why the nose? It may sound whimsical, but the exhibit celebrates a obscure natural marvel: scientists have discovered that in less than one second, the reindeer's nose can heat the ambient air it breathes in by 80°C, enabling the creature to endure in inhospitable Arctic temperatures. Expanding the nose to larger than human size, Sara says, "generates a sense of inferiority that you as a individual are not in control over nature." She is a ex- reporter, writer for kids, and environmental activist, who comes from a herding family in the Norwegian Arctic. "Perhaps that generates the chance to change your viewpoint or evoke some humility," she states.

A Celebration to Sámi Culture

The maze-like design is part of a features in Sara's immersive commission showcasing the culture, knowledge, and beliefs of the Sámi, the continent's original inhabitants. Semi-nomadic, the Sámi count roughly 100,000 people spread across the Norwegian north, Finland, the Swedish Lapland, and the Russian Arctic (an area they call Sápmi). They have faced discrimination, integration policies, and suppression of their tongue by all four countries. With an emphasis on the reindeer, an creature at the core of the Sámi belief system and founding narrative, the art also spotlights the people's challenges connected to the environmental emergency, loss of territory, and imperialism.

Meaning in Components

On the lengthy access slope, there's a looming, 26-metre formation of skins ensnared by utility lines. It can be read as a metaphor for the societal frameworks constraining the Sámi. Part pylon, part celestial ladder, this section of the artwork, named Goavve-, points to the Sámi name for an extreme weather phenomenon, in which dense coatings of ice develop as changing weather melt and solidify again the snow, encasing the reindeers' primary cold-season nourishment, moss. The condition is a outcome of global heating, which is happening up to at an accelerated rate in the Arctic than elsewhere.

A few years back, I traveled to see Sara in a remote town during a severe cold period and accompanied Sámi herders on their Arctic vehicles in biting cold as they carried trailers of animal nutrition on to the barren Arctic plains to provide through labor. The herd gathered round us, digging the slippery ground in futility for lichen-covered bits. This costly and demanding procedure is having a severe effect on herding practices—and on the animals' natural survival. But the other option is malnutrition. When such conditions become frequent, reindeer are dying—a number from hunger, others suffocating after plunging into lakes and rivers through thinning ice sheets. In a sense, the work is a memorial to them. "Through the stacking of components, in a way I'm introducing the goavvi to London," says Sara.

Opposing Belief Systems

This artwork also highlights the stark divergence between the modern understanding of power as a commodity to be exploited for gain and existence and the Sámi worldview of life force as an natural essence in creatures, individuals, and nature. The gallery's legacy as a industrial facility is connected to this, as is what the Sámi consider environmental exploitation by Scandinavian states. While attempting to be leaders for renewable energy, these states have locked horns with the Sámi over the development of wind energy projects, hydroelectric dams, and extraction sites on their traditional territory; the Sámi assert their legal protections, incomes, and traditions are threatened. "It's challenging being such a limited population to stand your ground when the justifications are grounded in environmental protection," Sara comments. "Resource exploitation has adopted the discourse of sustainability, but nonetheless it's just aiming to find alternative ways to continue patterns of use."

Individual Conflicts

She and her family have personally conflicted with the state authorities over its ever-stricter rules on reindeer management. In 2016, Sara's sibling undertook a sequence of ultimately unsuccessful legal cases over the mandatory slaughter of his herd, apparently to stop overgrazing. To back him, Sara produced a multi-year collection of artworks named Pile O'Sápmi featuring a colossal curtain of 400 reindeer skulls, which was shown at the 2017's event Documenta 14 and later acquired by the National Museum of Oslo, where it is displayed in the lobby.

The Role of Art in Awareness

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