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Guests to Tate Modern are used to unusual experiences in its expansive Turbine Hall. They have relaxed under an artificial sun, descended down spiral slides, and observed automated sea creatures hovering through the air. But this marks the first time they will be venturing themselves in the complex nasal chambers of a reindeer. The latest creative installation for this huge space—designed by Native Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—invites visitors into a winding structure based on the enlarged inside of a reindeer's nasal passages. Upon entering, they can meander around or chill out on reindeer hides, tuning in on headphones to Sámi elders sharing narratives and wisdom.

Why the Nose?

What's the focus on the nose? It could seem whimsical, but the artwork pays tribute to a little-known natural marvel: scientists have discovered that in under a second, the reindeer's nose can heat the surrounding air it breathes in by eighty degrees, helping the creature to thrive in extreme Arctic temperatures. Scaling the nose to human-scale dimensions, Sara says, "creates a perception of insignificance that you as a individual are not dominant over nature." She is a ex- journalist, young adult author, and land defender, who comes from a reindeer-herding family in the Norwegian Arctic. "Perhaps that generates the possibility to alter your viewpoint or trigger some humility," she states.

A Celebration to Sámi Culture

The labyrinthine structure is among various components in Sara's absorbing exhibition celebrating the culture, understanding, and beliefs of the Sámi, the continent's original inhabitants. Partially migratory, the Sámi total about 100,000 people ranged across the Norwegian north, Finland, the Swedish Lapland, and Russia's Kola Peninsula (an area they call Sápmi). They have experienced discrimination, cultural suppression, and eradication of their language by all four nations. Through highlighting the reindeer, an creature at the heart of the Sámi cosmology and founding narrative, the work also spotlights the people's challenges relating to the environmental emergency, loss of territory, and external control.

Symbolism in Materials

Along the lengthy access slope, there's a towering, 26-metre formation of reindeer hides entangled by utility lines. It represents a analogy for the governance and financial structures constraining the Sámi. Part pylon, part spiritual ascent, this part of the installation, titled Goavve-, relates to the Sámi name for an severe climatic event, whereby dense coatings of ice develop as changing conditions liquefy and refreeze the snow, encasing the reindeers' primary winter food, moss. The condition is a consequence of planetary warming, which is happening up to much more rapidly in the Arctic than elsewhere.

A few years back, I visited Sara in Guovdageaidnu during a severe cold period and accompanied Sámi reindeer keepers on their snowmobiles in chilly conditions as they transported containers of animal nutrition on to the wind-scoured tundra to provide through labor. These animals gathered round us, scratching the slippery ground in vain attempts for lichen-covered morsels. This costly and demanding procedure is having a severe influence on animal rearing—and on the animals' self-sufficiency. But the other option is death. As these icy periods become commonplace, reindeer are succumbing—a number from hunger, others submerging after sinking in water bodies through thinning ice sheets. In a sense, the installation is a monument to them. "By overlapping of elements, in a way I'm transporting the goavvi to London," says Sara.

Contrasting Worldviews

This artwork also emphasizes the sharp contrast between the modern view of electricity as a asset to be exploited for economic benefit and existence and the Sámi philosophy of vitality as an natural life force in animals, individuals, and land. This venue's past as a fossil fuel plant is tied up in this, as is what the Sámi see as eco-imperialism by regional governments. In their efforts to be standard bearers for sustainable power, Scandinavian countries have clashed with the Sámi over the construction of wind energy projects, hydroelectric dams, and mines on their ancestral land; the Sámi assert their fundamental freedoms, incomes, and traditions are at risk. "It's challenging being such a small minority to stand your ground when the arguments are based on saving the world," Sara comments. "Extractivism has appropriated the discourse of sustainability, but nonetheless it's just striving to find better ways to maintain habits of use."

Family Challenges

The artist and her relatives have themselves conflicted with the Norwegian government over its tightening regulations on reindeer management. In 2016, Sara's sibling embarked on a set of unsuccessful lawsuits over the mandatory slaughter of his animals, supposedly to stop vegetation depletion. As a show of solidarity, Sara developed a extended series of artworks called Pile O'Sápmi featuring a colossal drape of 400 reindeer skulls, which was shown at the 2017 art exhibition Documenta 14 and later obtained by the National Museum of Oslo, where it resides in the entrance.

Art as Activism

For numerous Indigenous people, visual expression is the exclusive domain in which they can be understood by outsiders. Two years ago, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|