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Visitors to Tate Modern are used to unusual displays in its expansive Turbine Hall. They have relaxed under an simulated sun, glided down spiral slides, and observed robotic jellyfish floating through the air. But this marks the inaugural time they will be engaging themselves in the intricate nasal cavities of a reindeer. The newest artistic project for this immense space—developed by Indigenous Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—invites gallerygoers into a labyrinthine construction based on the scaled-up interior of a reindeer's nasal cavities. Inside, they can wander around or unwind on pelts, listening on headphones to community leaders sharing tales and knowledge.

The Significance of the Nose

Why the nose? It could appear quirky, but the exhibit pays tribute to a obscure natural marvel: scientists have found that in less than one second, the reindeer's nose can raise the temperature of the incoming air it inhales by 80°C, helping the animal to endure in harsh Arctic climates. Expanding the nose to human-scale dimensions, Sara says, "generates a feeling of inferiority that you as a individual are not dominant over nature." She is a former writer, writer for kids, and rights advocate, who comes from a reindeer-herding family in northern Norway. "Maybe that fosters the potential to alter your perspective or spark some humility," she states.

A Tribute to Sámi Culture

The winding structure is part of a features in Sara's immersive exhibition honoring the traditions, science, and philosophy of the Sámi, the continent's original inhabitants. Partially migratory, the Sámi total approximately 100,000 people spread across northern Norway, Finland, Sweden, and the Russian Arctic (an region they call Sápmi). They've endured oppression, forced assimilation, and suppression of their language by all four states. With an emphasis on the reindeer, an animal at the heart of the Sámi belief system and creation story, the art also spotlights the group's struggles relating to the global warming, land dispossession, and colonialism.

Meaning in Elements

On the lengthy entry incline, there's a soaring, eighty-five-foot sculpture of skins ensnared by electrical wires. It represents a metaphor for the political and economic systems limiting the Sámi. Like an electrical tower, part celestial ladder, this section of the artwork, named Goavve-, relates to the Sámi term for an extreme weather phenomenon, wherein solid sheets of ice develop as fluctuating weather melt and solidify again the snow, trapping the reindeers' key winter sustenance, fungus. This phenomenon is a result of planetary warming, which is happening up to much more rapidly in the Arctic than globally.

A few years back, I met with Sara in Guovdageaidnu during a icy season and accompanied Sámi reindeer keepers on their Arctic vehicles in biting cold as they carried containers of food pellets on to the barren tundra to distribute manually. These animals surrounded round us, pawing the icy ground in futility for vegetative bits. This expensive and demanding method is having a severe impact on herding practices—and on the animals' natural survival. However the other option is malnutrition. As goavvi winters become routine, reindeer are dying—some from hunger, others suffocating after plunging into water bodies through prematurely melting ice. In a sense, the installation is a memorial to them. "By overlapping of components, in a way I'm bringing the phenomenon to London," says Sara.

Contrasting Belief Systems

This artwork also highlights the clear divergence between the modern view of power as a asset to be harnessed for gain and survival and the Sámi outlook of vitality as an natural essence in animals, people, and nature. This venue's legacy as a coal and oil power station is tied up in this, as is what the Sámi see as eco-imperialism by Scandinavian states. In their efforts to be exemplars for sustainable power, Scandinavian countries have locked horns with the Sámi over the development of wind energy projects, river barriers, and mines on their native soil; the Sámi contend their fundamental freedoms, ways of life, and way of life are threatened. "It's very difficult being such a small minority to protect your rights when the justifications are grounded in global sustainability," Sara notes. "Extractivism has adopted the rhetoric of sustainability, but still it's just attempting to find better ways to maintain practices of expenditure."

Personal Challenges

The artist and her relatives have themselves clashed with the Norwegian government over its ever-stricter regulations on herding. Previously, Sara's brother embarked on a sequence of unsuccessful lawsuits over the required reduction of his animals, ostensibly to stop excessive feeding. As a show of solidarity, Sara produced a four-year set of pieces named Pile O'Sápmi featuring a colossal screen of numerous animal bones, which was shown at the 2017 event Documenta 14 and later acquired by the public gallery, where it hangs in the entryway.

The Role of Art in Awareness

For many Sámi, visual expression seems the only realm in which they can be listened to by people of other nations. Two years ago, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|