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Attendees to Tate Modern are accustomed to unusual displays in its expansive Turbine Hall. They've basked under an man-made sun, slid down amusement rides, and witnessed AI-powered sea creatures drifting through the air. But this marks the inaugural time they will be engaging themselves in the detailed nose cavities of a reindeer. The current artist commission for this immense space—created by Native Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—invites gallerygoers into a labyrinthine design based on the enlarged interior of a reindeer's nasal passages. Inside, they can wander around or relax on skins, tuning in on earphones to Sámi elders imparting tales and insights.

Focus on the Nasal Passages

What's the focus on the nose? It might seem playful, but the installation honors a obscure scientific wonder: experts have discovered that in under a second, the reindeer's nose can warm the surrounding air it inhales by 80 degrees celsius, allowing the creature to survive in extreme Arctic climates. Expanding the nose to human-scale dimensions, Sara explains, "produces a feeling of inferiority that you as a person are not dominant over nature." The artist is a ex- reporter, children's author, and environmental activist, who comes from a reindeer-herding family in the Norwegian Arctic. "Perhaps that creates the chance to shift your outlook or evoke some humility," she adds.

A Tribute to Traditional Ways

The maze-like design is part of a features in Sara's immersive art project honoring the traditions, knowledge, and beliefs of the Sámi, the sole native group in Europe. Traditionally mobile, the Sámi count about 100,000 people distributed across the Norwegian north, Finland, Sweden, and the Kola region (an region they call Sápmi). They have faced persecution, forced assimilation, and repression of their language by all four states. With an emphasis on the reindeer, an creature at the core of the Sámi belief system and origin tale, the work also spotlights the group's struggles associated with the environmental emergency, property rights, and imperialism.

Meaning in Elements

At the extended access ramp, there's a towering, 26-meter structure of pelts ensnared by power and light cables. It represents a symbol for the societal frameworks restricting the Sámi. Partly a utility pole, part spiritual ascent, this part of the artwork, named Goavve-, relates to the Sámi name for an harsh environmental condition, whereby thick coatings of ice form as varying weather melt and ice over the snow, trapping the reindeers' main winter nourishment, lichen. The condition is a outcome of climate change, which is occurring up to four times faster in the Polar region than globally.

Three years ago, I met with Sara in the Norwegian far north during a severe cold period and joined Sámi reindeer keepers on their motorized sleds in biting cold as they carried trailers of supplementary feed on to the exposed Arctic plains to distribute by hand. These animals gathered round us, pawing the frozen ground in futility for mossy morsels. This resource-intensive and demanding procedure is having a drastic effect on animal rearing—and on the animals' independence. However the choice is malnutrition. When such conditions become commonplace, reindeer are perishing—a number from lack of food, others drowning after plunging into lakes and rivers through unstable frozen surfaces. On one level, the work is a monument to them. "By overlapping of components, in a way I'm introducing the condition to London," says Sara.

Diverging Belief Systems

The installation also underscores the clear contrast between the industrial view of energy as a asset to be exploited for profit and livelihood and the Sámi philosophy of life force as an inherent life force in creatures, individuals, and land. This venue's history as a coal and oil power station is linked with this, as is what the Sámi see as green colonialism by Nordic countries. While attempting to be leaders for renewable energy, these states have clashed with the Sámi over the development of turbine fields, river barriers, and digging operations on their ancestral land; the Sámi argue their human rights, incomes, and culture are endangered. "It's hard being such a limited population to defend yourself when the arguments are grounded in saving the world," Sara comments. "Extractivism has co-opted the language of ecology, but yet it's just attempting to find better ways to persist in practices of consumption."

Individual Conflicts

She and her relatives have themselves clashed with the Norwegian government over its increasingly stringent policies on animal husbandry. Previously, Sara's brother initiated a set of finally failed court actions over the required reduction of his livestock, supposedly to stop vegetation depletion. In support, Sara produced a multi-year series of pieces titled Pile O'Sápmi featuring a colossal curtain of 400 animal bones, which was exhibited at the the art exhibition Documenta 14 and later obtained by the national institution, where it is displayed in the lobby.

Art as Activism

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