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Attendees to Tate Modern are familiar to unusual encounters in its vast Turbine Hall. They've sunbathed under an simulated sun, descended down amusement rides, and witnessed AI-powered sea creatures floating through the air. However this marks the inaugural time they will be venturing themselves in the complex nasal passages of a reindeer. The newest creative installation for this cavernous space—designed by Native Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—invites patrons into a maze-like design based on the expanded interior of a reindeer's nose airways. Once inside, they can meander around or relax on skins, listening on headphones to community leaders imparting narratives and wisdom.

Focus on the Nasal Passages

What's the focus on the nose? It could sound quirky, but the installation celebrates a rarely recognized natural marvel: researchers have discovered that in under a second, the reindeer's nose can heat the ambient air it takes in by eighty degrees, enabling the creature to survive in extreme Arctic conditions. Expanding the nose to bigger than a person, Sara notes, "creates a sense of insignificance that you as a human being are not superior over nature." She is a ex- journalist, young adult author, and environmental activist, who is from a reindeer-herding family in the Norwegian Arctic. "Possibly that fosters the chance to alter your outlook or trigger some humility," she continues.

A Tribute to Sámi Culture

The winding design is part of a components in Sara's engaging commission celebrating the traditions, knowledge, and worldview of the Sámi, Europe's only Indigenous people. Traditionally mobile, the Sámi total roughly 100,000 people distributed across the Norwegian north, Finland, the Swedish Lapland, and the Russian Arctic (an area they call Sápmi). They have endured discrimination, cultural suppression, and eradication of their language by all four nations. With an emphasis on the reindeer, an creature at the heart of the Sámi cosmology and creation story, the work also draws attention to the people's struggles associated with the global warming, property rights, and colonialism.

Meaning in Elements

On the long entrance slope, there's a towering, 26-metre structure of pelts entangled by electrical wires. It serves as a symbol for the political and economic systems limiting the Sámi. Part pylon, part heavenly staircase, this part of the artwork, named Goavve-, relates to the Sámi word for an severe climatic event, whereby thick layers of ice form as fluctuating temperatures liquefy and refreeze the snow, encasing the reindeers' main winter nourishment, lichen. The condition is a result of climate change, which is happening up to at an accelerated rate in the Far North than elsewhere.

Three years ago, I traveled to see Sara in Guovdageaidnu during a icy season and joined Sámi pastoralists on their snowmobiles in biting cold as they transported containers of food pellets on to the exposed tundra to dispense manually. The herd gathered round us, digging the frozen ground in vain attempts for vegetative bits. This expensive and laborious process is having a severe influence on reindeer husbandry—and on the animals' self-sufficiency. But the other option is malnutrition. As these icy periods become frequent, reindeer are dying—some from lack of food, others drowning after falling into water bodies through prematurely melting ice. In a sense, the work is a memorial to them. "Through the stacking of materials, in a way I'm bringing the goavvi to London," says Sara.

Opposing Perspectives

The sculpture also highlights the stark difference between the modern view of electricity as a commodity to be harnessed for gain and existence and the Sámi worldview of vitality as an natural power in animals, individuals, and the environment. This venue's past as a industrial facility is linked with this, as is what the Sámi see as eco-imperialism by regional governments. While attempting to be leaders for clean sources, Nordic nations have locked horns with the Sámi over the construction of windfarms, river barriers, and extraction sites on their native soil; the Sámi assert their legal protections, ways of life, and culture are endangered. "It's very difficult being such a limited population to defend yourself when the arguments are rooted in environmental protection," Sara notes. "Mining practices has co-opted the language of environmentalism, but yet it's just attempting to find better ways to persist in practices of consumption."

Personal Challenges

Sara and her relatives have personally conflicted with the state authorities over its increasingly stringent regulations on reindeer management. A few years ago, Sara's brother embarked on a series of finally failed court actions over the forced culling of his animals, apparently to stop excessive feeding. In support, Sara developed a four-year series of pieces titled Pile O'Sápmi comprising a colossal curtain of four hundred animal bones, which was displayed at the 2017's art exhibition Documenta 14 and later obtained by the National Museum of Oslo, where it is displayed in the lobby.

Creative Expression as Advocacy

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