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Visitors to Tate Modern are used to unexpected encounters in its vast Turbine Hall. They have basked under an man-made sun, glided down helter skelters, and seen robotic sea creatures floating through the air. Yet this marks the initial time they will be venturing themselves in the detailed nose passages of a reindeer. The current artistic project for this immense space—developed by Indigenous Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—welcomes visitors into a winding construction based on the enlarged interior of a reindeer's nose passages. Inside, they can stroll around or relax on pelts, listening on earphones to Sámi elders imparting tales and insights.

Why the Nose?

Why the nose? It may seem quirky, but the artwork honors a rarely recognized scientific wonder: scientists have found that in under a second, the reindeer's nose can heat the incoming air it breathes in by 80°C, helping the animal to thrive in extreme Arctic climates. Scaling the nose to larger than human size, Sara says, "generates a sense of insignificance that you as a individual are not superior over nature." The artist is a former journalist, young adult author, and land defender, who comes from a reindeer-herding family in the far north of Norway. "Possibly that generates the potential to alter your viewpoint or trigger some humility," she continues.

A Tribute to Indigenous Heritage

The winding structure is among various features in Sara's immersive exhibition showcasing the culture, science, and philosophy of the Sámi, the continent's original inhabitants. Semi-nomadic, the Sámi number approximately 100,000 people spread across the Norwegian north, the Finnish Arctic, Sweden, and Russia's Kola Peninsula (an territory they call Sápmi). They have faced discrimination, cultural suppression, and repression of their language by all four nations. By focusing on the reindeer, an animal at the heart of the Sámi cosmology and creation story, the installation also draws attention to the group's struggles associated with the climate crisis, loss of territory, and external control.

Symbolism in Components

Along the long entrance ramp, there's a looming, 26-metre sculpture of pelts trapped by electrical wires. It serves as a symbol for the societal frameworks limiting the Sámi. Partly a utility pole, part spiritual ascent, this component of the installation, called Goavve-, points to the Sámi term for an severe climatic event, in which dense sheets of ice develop as varying weather melt and ice over the snow, trapping the reindeers' primary cold-season sustenance, lichen. The condition is a outcome of climate change, which is taking place up to four times faster in the Far North than in other regions.

Three years ago, I visited Sara in the Norwegian far north during a goavvi winter and joined Sámi pastoralists on their Arctic vehicles in biting cold as they transported carts of food pellets on to the barren Arctic plains to provide through labor. These animals crowded round us, pawing the slippery ground in futility for vegetative pieces. This costly and demanding method is having a severe effect on herding practices—and on the animals' self-sufficiency. However the choice is starvation. When such conditions become commonplace, reindeer are succumbing—a number from hunger, others suffocating after plunging into water bodies through unstable frozen surfaces. In a sense, the work is a tribute to them. "Through the stacking of elements, in a way I'm introducing the condition to London," says Sara.

Opposing Belief Systems

The installation also underscores the sharp difference between the western understanding of electricity as a asset to be exploited for gain and livelihood and the Sámi outlook of vitality as an innate power in animals, individuals, and the environment. Tate Modern's legacy as a fossil fuel plant is tied up in this, as is what the Sámi view as environmental exploitation by Scandinavian states. In their efforts to be standard bearers for renewable energy, Scandinavian countries have locked horns with the Sámi over the construction of windfarms, river barriers, and extraction sites on their native soil; the Sámi argue their human rights, livelihoods, and culture are endangered. "It's very difficult being such a small minority to stand your ground when the justifications are grounded in saving the world," Sara notes. "Resource exploitation has adopted the language of sustainability, but still it's just attempting to find better ways to continue patterns of consumption."

Family Challenges

The artist and her family have personally conflicted with the state authorities over its tightening rules on reindeer management. In 2016, Sara's sibling undertook a set of ultimately unsuccessful court actions over the required reduction of his animals, supposedly to stop excessive feeding. As a show of solidarity, Sara created a multi-year set of artworks called Pile O'Sápmi comprising a massive screen of numerous reindeer skulls, which was displayed at the 2017's event Documenta 14 and later acquired by the national institution, where it hangs in the entrance.

Creative Expression as Awareness

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