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Attendees to Tate Modern are used to unexpected displays in its expansive Turbine Hall. They have sunbathed under an artificial sun, slid down amusement rides, and seen robotic sea creatures hovering through the air. But this marks the first time they will be venturing themselves in the detailed nasal passages of a reindeer. The newest artistic project for this cavernous space—designed by Indigenous Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—invites visitors into a labyrinthine structure inspired by the scaled-up inside of a reindeer's nasal airways. Once inside, they can stroll around or chill out on reindeer hides, listening on earphones to community leaders telling stories and insights.

Focus on the Nasal Passages

What's the focus on the nose? It might seem playful, but the exhibit celebrates a rarely recognized biological feat: experts have found that in a fraction of a second, the reindeer's nose can warm the incoming air it takes in by 80°C, enabling the animal to thrive in harsh Arctic conditions. Expanding the nose to human-scale dimensions, Sara notes, "generates a perception of smallness that you as a human being are not in control over nature." Sara is a former journalist, young adult author, and rights advocate, who comes from a reindeer-herding family in the Norwegian Arctic. "Possibly that creates the chance to alter your viewpoint or evoke some humility," she states.

A Tribute to Sámi Culture

The maze-like installation is one of several features in Sara's absorbing commission honoring the traditions, knowledge, and worldview of the Sámi, Europe's only Indigenous people. Partially migratory, the Sámi number approximately 100,000 people ranged across northern Norway, Finland, the Swedish Lapland, and the Russian Arctic (an region they call Sápmi). They've faced oppression, cultural suppression, and suppression of their dialect by all four nations. Through highlighting the reindeer, an animal at the center of the Sámi belief system and origin tale, the installation also highlights the group's issues associated with the environmental emergency, property rights, and colonialism.

Meaning in Elements

Along the lengthy access incline, there's a looming, 26-meter sculpture of skins trapped by utility lines. It serves as a symbol for the governance and financial structures constraining the Sámi. Partly a utility pole, part heavenly staircase, this component of the artwork, called Goavve-, refers to the Sámi term for an severe climatic event, wherein solid coatings of ice develop as varying temperatures thaw and solidify again the snow, locking in the reindeers' key cold-season food, fungus. This phenomenon is a result of global heating, which is happening up to much more rapidly in the Polar region than in other regions.

Three years ago, I met with Sara in a remote town during a icy season and went with Sámi herders on their motorized sleds in biting cold as they transported trailers of supplementary feed on to the wind-scoured frozen landscape to provide manually. The reindeer crowded round us, digging the slippery ground in futility for lichen-covered bits. This costly and laborious method is having a drastic effect on herding practices—and on the animals' independence. Yet the other option is malnutrition. As these icy periods become routine, reindeer are perishing—a number from lack of food, others submerging after plunging into streams through unstable frozen surfaces. To some extent, the work is a monument to them. "Through the stacking of components, in a way I'm bringing the condition to London," says Sara.

Opposing Worldviews

This artwork also highlights the sharp contrast between the modern view of electricity as a resource to be utilized for economic benefit and livelihood and the Sámi worldview of life force as an innate essence in creatures, humans, and land. Tate Modern's legacy as a coal and oil power station is tied up in this, as is what the Sámi view as green colonialism by regional governments. In their efforts to be exemplars for sustainable power, Nordic nations have disagreed with the Sámi over the development of windfarms, hydroelectric dams, and extraction sites on their native soil; the Sámi assert their human rights, ways of life, and culture are endangered. "It's very difficult being such a tiny group to defend yourself when the justifications are grounded in global sustainability," Sara observes. "Resource exploitation has adopted the discourse of environmentalism, but nonetheless it's just attempting to find alternative ways to persist in patterns of consumption."

Personal Struggles

Sara and her kin have themselves clashed with the Norwegian government over its tightening policies on animal husbandry. Previously, Sara's sibling undertook a sequence of finally failed court actions over the mandatory slaughter of his livestock, ostensibly to stop vegetation depletion. As a show of solidarity, Sara produced a multi-year set of artworks called Pile O'Sápmi featuring a colossal curtain of 400 animal bones, which was displayed at the 2017 event Documenta 14 and later acquired by the National Museum of Oslo, where it resides in the entryway.

Creative Expression as Advocacy

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