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Visitors to Tate Modern are familiar to unusual encounters in its expansive Turbine Hall. They have sunbathed under an artificial sun, slid down amusement rides, and seen robotic jellyfish floating through the air. Yet this marks the initial time they will be immersing themselves in the intricate nasal passages of a reindeer. The newest creative installation for this immense space—created by Native Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—welcomes patrons into a winding construction inspired by the scaled-up inside of a reindeer's nasal airways. Once inside, they can stroll around or unwind on skins, listening on earphones to Sámi elders telling tales and knowledge.

The Significance of the Nose

Why the nose? It might sound quirky, but the installation honors a little-known natural marvel: scientists have found that in a fraction of a second, the reindeer's nose can warm the surrounding air it inhales by eighty degrees, helping the creature to thrive in extreme Arctic climates. Scaling the nose to bigger than a person, Sara explains, "generates a feeling of smallness that you as a human being are not superior over nature." The artist is a ex- reporter, children's author, and environmental activist, who is from a pastoral family in the Norwegian Arctic. "Perhaps that creates the chance to alter your outlook or spark some humbleness," she continues.

An Homage to Traditional Ways

The winding installation is one of several components in Sara's engaging exhibition honoring the heritage, science, and worldview of the Sámi, the sole native group in Europe. Traditionally mobile, the Sámi count about 100,000 people spread across the Norwegian north, the Finnish Arctic, the Swedish Lapland, and Russia's Kola Peninsula (an region they call Sápmi). They've endured persecution, cultural suppression, and repression of their language by all four states. Through highlighting the reindeer, an creature at the heart of the Sámi cosmology and origin tale, the work also spotlights the group's issues connected to the climate crisis, property rights, and imperialism.

Meaning in Elements

Along the long entry ramp, there's a looming, 26-metre sculpture of reindeer hides ensnared by utility lines. It serves as a metaphor for the political and economic systems constraining the Sámi. Partly a utility pole, part celestial ladder, this component of the artwork, called Goavve-, relates to the Sámi name for an extreme weather phenomenon, wherein dense coatings of ice appear as changing temperatures liquefy and refreeze the snow, trapping the reindeers' primary winter food, moss. Goavvi is a consequence of climate change, which is taking place up to much more rapidly in the Arctic than elsewhere.

Previously, I visited Sara in the Norwegian far north during a severe cold period and accompanied Sámi reindeer keepers on their motorized sleds in biting cold as they carried containers of food pellets on to the barren frozen landscape to provide manually. These animals gathered round us, pawing the icy ground in futility for lichen-covered pieces. This resource-intensive and labour-intensive process is having a drastic influence on animal rearing—and on the animals' independence. But the other option is malnutrition. As goavvi winters become commonplace, reindeer are perishing—some from lack of food, others drowning after plunging into lakes and rivers through thinning ice sheets. In a sense, the art is a monument to them. "By overlapping of elements, in a way I'm introducing the goavvi to London," says Sara.

Diverging Perspectives

The installation also emphasizes the clear difference between the modern understanding of electricity as a resource to be utilized for profit and existence and the Sámi philosophy of energy as an innate essence in creatures, individuals, and the environment. The gallery's legacy as a industrial facility is connected to this, as is what the Sámi consider green colonialism by regional governments. In their efforts to be exemplars for renewable energy, Nordic nations have locked horns with the Sámi over the building of turbine fields, river barriers, and digging operations on their native soil; the Sámi contend their fundamental freedoms, incomes, and culture are at risk. "It's hard being such a limited population to stand your ground when the arguments are based on saving the world," Sara comments. "Mining practices has adopted the discourse of environmentalism, but yet it's just attempting to find better ways to persist in habits of use."

Family Challenges

Sara and her family have personally conflicted with the state authorities over its ever-stricter rules on herding. A few years ago, Sara's brother embarked on a series of ultimately unsuccessful legal cases over the mandatory slaughter of his livestock, apparently to stop overgrazing. To back him, Sara produced a four-year set of artworks called Pile O'Sápmi comprising a colossal drape of numerous cranial remains, which was shown at the 2017's show Documenta 14 and later obtained by the national institution, where it hangs in the lobby.

The Role of Art in Awareness

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