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Guests to Tate Modern are used to surprising displays in its spacious Turbine Hall. They've sunbathed under an man-made sun, slid down spiral slides, and witnessed automated sea creatures drifting through the air. Yet this marks the initial time they will be immersing themselves in the detailed nose cavities of a reindeer. The newest artist commission for this huge space—designed by Indigenous Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—welcomes gallerygoers into a labyrinthine construction inspired by the enlarged interior of a reindeer's nose airways. Once inside, they can meander around or relax on reindeer hides, tuning in on earphones to community leaders telling narratives and wisdom.

The Significance of the Nose

What's the focus on the nose? It could appear playful, but the artwork celebrates a obscure natural marvel: experts have discovered that in a fraction of a second, the reindeer's nose can warm the incoming air it breathes in by 80 degrees celsius, helping the animal to thrive in harsh Arctic conditions. Expanding the nose to bigger than a person, Sara explains, "generates a sense of smallness that you as a human being are not superior over nature." The artist is a ex- writer, young adult author, and land defender, who hails from a herding family in the Norwegian Arctic. "Maybe that creates the chance to shift your perspective or trigger some modesty," she adds.

A Celebration to Sámi Culture

The maze-like design is among various elements in Sara's absorbing commission honoring the traditions, science, and philosophy of the Sámi, the continent's original inhabitants. Traditionally mobile, the Sámi count about 100,000 people ranged across the Norwegian north, Finland, the Swedish Lapland, and the Russian Arctic (an region they call Sápmi). They've experienced persecution, integration policies, and eradication of their language by all four states. With an emphasis on the reindeer, an creature at the heart of the Sámi mythology and founding narrative, the installation also draws attention to the people's challenges connected to the global warming, loss of territory, and imperialism.

Meaning in Components

On the lengthy access slope, there's a towering, eighty-five-foot formation of skins ensnared by power and light cables. It can be read as a metaphor for the societal frameworks constraining the Sámi. Like an electrical tower, part heavenly staircase, this component of the installation, titled Goavve-, points to the Sámi term for an extreme weather phenomenon, in which dense layers of ice appear as changing conditions liquefy and refreeze the snow, encasing the reindeers' primary winter sustenance, lichen. This phenomenon is a outcome of climate change, which is occurring up to at an accelerated rate in the Arctic than globally.

Previously, I met with Sara in a remote town during a icy season and went with Sámi pastoralists on their snowmobiles in biting cold as they carried trailers of supplementary feed on to the exposed Arctic plains to distribute by hand. The reindeer surrounded round us, scratching the slippery ground in vain attempts for vegetative pieces. This costly and laborious process is having a significant impact on animal rearing—and on the animals' self-sufficiency. However the other option is death. When such conditions become commonplace, reindeer are perishing—some from hunger, others suffocating after plunging into streams through prematurely melting ice. In a sense, the art is a tribute to them. "By overlapping of elements, in a way I'm introducing the condition to London," says Sara.

Opposing Perspectives

The sculpture also emphasizes the sharp difference between the western interpretation of power as a asset to be harnessed for gain and existence and the Sámi worldview of energy as an innate essence in animals, humans, and the environment. The gallery's history as a coal and oil power station is connected to this, as is what the Sámi view as eco-imperialism by Scandinavian states. In their efforts to be standard bearers for sustainable power, these states have locked horns with the Sámi over the construction of wind energy projects, water power facilities, and mines on their ancestral land; the Sámi contend their fundamental freedoms, ways of life, and traditions are at risk. "It's hard being such a small minority to protect your rights when the justifications are grounded in environmental protection," Sara comments. "Resource exploitation has co-opted the rhetoric of ecology, but yet it's just aiming to find better ways to maintain practices of consumption."

Individual Struggles

The artist and her relatives have personally clashed with the state authorities over its ever-stricter regulations on herding. In 2016, Sara's brother initiated a series of ultimately unsuccessful lawsuits over the mandatory slaughter of his herd, apparently to stop excessive feeding. To back him, Sara created a multi-year set of creations called Pile O'Sápmi featuring a massive screen of 400 reindeer skulls, which was displayed at the 2017 event Documenta 14 and later obtained by the National Museum of Oslo, where it resides in the lobby.

Creative Expression as Activism

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