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Visitors to Tate Modern are used to unusual displays in its spacious Turbine Hall. They've sunbathed under an simulated sun, slid down amusement rides, and witnessed AI-powered sea creatures drifting through the air. Yet this marks the inaugural time they will be venturing themselves in the detailed nasal passages of a reindeer. The newest artistic project for this immense space—created by Native Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—invites gallerygoers into a winding construction inspired by the scaled-up inside of a reindeer's nose airways. Inside, they can stroll around or unwind on reindeer hides, tuning in on earphones to Sámi elders sharing narratives and wisdom.

The Significance of the Nose

What's the focus on the nose? It might appear playful, but the exhibit honors a rarely recognized scientific wonder: researchers have discovered that in less than one second, the reindeer's nose can raise the temperature of the ambient air it breathes in by 80 degrees celsius, helping the creature to survive in extreme Arctic climates. Expanding the nose to bigger than a person, Sara notes, "produces a perception of insignificance that you as a person are not superior over nature." Sara is a former writer, young adult author, and environmental activist, who comes from a herding family in northern Norway. "Maybe that creates the potential to alter your perspective or spark some humility," she adds.

A Tribute to Indigenous Heritage

The labyrinthine installation is part of a elements in Sara's absorbing exhibition honoring the heritage, science, and philosophy of the Sámi, the continent's original inhabitants. Partially migratory, the Sámi number roughly 100,000 people ranged across the Norwegian north, Finland, the Swedish Lapland, and Russia's Kola Peninsula (an territory they call Sápmi). They have faced oppression, forced assimilation, and suppression of their language by all four nations. By focusing on the reindeer, an animal at the heart of the Sámi belief system and origin tale, the work also spotlights the community's struggles relating to the climate crisis, loss of territory, and imperialism.

Metaphor in Materials

At the long entrance slope, there's a soaring, eighty-five-foot structure of reindeer hides ensnared by electrical wires. It serves as a analogy for the governance and financial structures constraining the Sámi. Like an electrical tower, part heavenly staircase, this component of the artwork, called Goavve-, points to the Sámi term for an severe climatic event, whereby dense sheets of ice develop as fluctuating conditions melt and refreeze the snow, trapping the reindeers' main winter nourishment, fungus. This phenomenon is a consequence of climate change, which is taking place up to at an accelerated rate in the Polar region than elsewhere.

A few years back, I traveled to see Sara in the Norwegian far north during a goavvi winter and joined Sámi pastoralists on their motorized sleds in biting cold as they carried containers of supplementary feed on to the barren Arctic plains to provide through labor. These animals gathered round us, scratching the icy ground in vain for vegetative pieces. This costly and laborious process is having a drastic effect on herding practices—and on the animals' self-sufficiency. But the alternative is malnutrition. When such conditions become frequent, reindeer are succumbing—some from lack of food, others submerging after sinking in water bodies through prematurely melting ice. On one level, the art is a monument to them. "By overlapping of components, in a way I'm bringing the condition to London," says Sara.

Opposing Perspectives

The installation also underscores the sharp contrast between the western interpretation of energy as a resource to be utilized for profit and existence and the Sámi outlook of life force as an natural power in creatures, humans, and nature. This venue's legacy as a industrial facility is linked with this, as is what the Sámi see as green colonialism by Scandinavian states. In their efforts to be standard bearers for renewable energy, Scandinavian countries have disagreed with the Sámi over the construction of windfarms, hydroelectric dams, and mines on their ancestral land; the Sámi contend their human rights, ways of life, and traditions are at risk. "It's hard being such a small minority to defend yourself when the arguments are based on environmental protection," Sara observes. "Mining practices has adopted the rhetoric of environmentalism, but still it's just striving to find more suitable ways to continue practices of consumption."

Family Struggles

The artist and her relatives have themselves disagreed with the state authorities over its increasingly stringent regulations on animal husbandry. A few years ago, Sara's brother initiated a series of finally failed court actions over the required reduction of his animals, supposedly to stop overgrazing. In support, Sara developed a multi-year set of artworks called Pile O'Sápmi comprising a colossal drape of four hundred animal bones, which was shown at the 2017 event Documenta 14 and later acquired by the national institution, where it hangs in the lobby.

The Role of Art in Advocacy

For many Sámi, creative work is the exclusive sphere in which they can be heard by outsiders. Recently, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|