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Visitors to Tate Modern are familiar to surprising encounters in its expansive Turbine Hall. They've relaxed under an man-made sun, glided down spiral slides, and witnessed robotic sea creatures hovering through the air. However this marks the first time they will be venturing themselves in the intricate nose chambers of a reindeer. The current artistic project for this immense space—created by Native Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—encourages patrons into a maze-like design inspired by the scaled-up inside of a reindeer's nose passages. Inside, they can stroll around or chill out on skins, tuning in on earphones to community leaders sharing stories and knowledge.

Focus on the Nasal Passages

What's the focus on the nose? It might seem playful, but the installation honors a little-known natural marvel: experts have uncovered that in less than one second, the reindeer's nose can raise the temperature of the ambient air it inhales by 80 degrees celsius, allowing the creature to survive in inhospitable Arctic temperatures. Scaling the nose to larger than human size, Sara explains, "generates a perception of smallness that you as a human being are not superior over nature." The artist is a former journalist, young adult author, and land defender, who hails from a reindeer-herding family in the Norwegian Arctic. "Possibly that generates the potential to shift your perspective or spark some humbleness," she adds.

A Tribute to Sámi Culture

The winding design is among various components in Sara's engaging exhibition celebrating the traditions, knowledge, and philosophy of the Sámi, the sole native group in Europe. Traditionally mobile, the Sámi number approximately 100,000 people ranged across the Norwegian north, the Finnish Arctic, the Swedish Lapland, and Russia's Kola Peninsula (an area they call Sápmi). They have experienced discrimination, integration policies, and repression of their language by all four nations. Through highlighting the reindeer, an animal at the core of the Sámi belief system and creation story, the work also draws attention to the group's challenges associated with the climate crisis, loss of territory, and colonialism.

Symbolism in Elements

On the lengthy access slope, there's a soaring, 26-metre structure of pelts trapped by power and light cables. It can be read as a metaphor for the governance and financial structures limiting the Sámi. Part pylon, part heavenly staircase, this component of the exhibit, titled Goavve-, relates to the Sámi name for an extreme weather phenomenon, whereby thick sheets of ice develop as varying conditions thaw and solidify again the snow, locking in the reindeers' main cold-season sustenance, fungus. This phenomenon is a consequence of global heating, which is occurring up to four times faster in the Arctic than in other regions.

A few years back, I visited Sara in a remote town during a icy season and went with Sámi herders on their motorized sleds in chilly conditions as they transported carts of animal nutrition on to the exposed tundra to distribute manually. The herd gathered round us, pawing the slippery ground in vain attempts for lichen-covered bits. This expensive and labour-intensive procedure is having a drastic effect on reindeer husbandry—and on the animals' self-sufficiency. However the alternative is starvation. As these icy periods become commonplace, reindeer are dying—some from starvation, others suffocating after falling into water bodies through prematurely melting ice. To some extent, the work is a monument to them. "With the layering of components, in a way I'm transporting the condition to London," says Sara.

Contrasting Belief Systems

The installation also highlights the clear contrast between the western interpretation of energy as a asset to be utilized for gain and existence and the Sámi philosophy of energy as an inherent life force in creatures, humans, and the environment. Tate Modern's past as a industrial facility is tied up in this, as is what the Sámi view as eco-imperialism by Nordic countries. In their efforts to be exemplars for sustainable power, Nordic nations have locked horns with the Sámi over the construction of turbine fields, river barriers, and digging operations on their ancestral land; the Sámi contend their human rights, ways of life, and traditions are threatened. "It's challenging being such a limited population to protect your rights when the justifications are grounded in saving the world," Sara comments. "Mining practices has adopted the language of ecology, but yet it's just attempting to find more suitable ways to maintain patterns of expenditure."

Individual Conflicts

Sara and her kin have personally clashed with the state authorities over its tightening regulations on reindeer management. A few years ago, Sara's sibling undertook a set of unsuccessful legal cases over the required reduction of his livestock, apparently to stop overgrazing. As a show of solidarity, Sara developed a four-year series of creations titled Pile O'Sápmi featuring a massive drape of numerous animal bones, which was displayed at the the show Documenta 14 and later purchased by the National Museum of Oslo, where it is displayed in the entryway.

The Role of Art in Activism

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