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Guests to Tate Modern are familiar to unexpected displays in its expansive Turbine Hall. They have relaxed under an simulated sun, glided down amusement rides, and seen automated jellyfish drifting through the air. But this marks the initial time they will be venturing themselves in the detailed nasal cavities of a reindeer. The newest artist commission for this cavernous space—created by Indigenous Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—encourages patrons into a labyrinthine design based on the scaled-up inside of a reindeer's nasal cavities. Inside, they can meander around or unwind on skins, listening on earphones to Sámi elders sharing stories and knowledge.

The Significance of the Nose

What's the focus on the nose? It might seem quirky, but the exhibit honors a little-known biological feat: researchers have uncovered that in less than one second, the reindeer's nose can warm the surrounding air it breathes in by 80°C, allowing the animal to endure in harsh Arctic temperatures. Expanding the nose to human-scale dimensions, Sara says, "generates a perception of insignificance that you as a human being are not dominant over nature." She is a former journalist, writer for kids, and environmental activist, who is from a reindeer-herding family in the far north of Norway. "Perhaps that creates the chance to change your viewpoint or trigger some modesty," she adds.

A Tribute to Sámi Culture

The labyrinthine design is one of several components in Sara's engaging commission showcasing the traditions, understanding, and beliefs of the Sámi, the sole native group in Europe. Partially migratory, the Sámi count roughly 100,000 people ranged across northern Norway, the Finnish Arctic, the Swedish Lapland, and the Kola region (an region they call Sápmi). They've experienced discrimination, integration policies, and suppression of their language by all four nations. With an emphasis on the reindeer, an animal at the heart of the Sámi mythology and origin tale, the installation also draws attention to the group's challenges connected to the global warming, loss of territory, and colonialism.

Meaning in Materials

On the long access slope, there's a soaring, 26-meter structure of skins trapped by electrical wires. It can be read as a analogy for the governance and financial structures constraining the Sámi. Part pylon, part celestial ladder, this component of the installation, titled Goavve-, refers to the Sámi name for an severe climatic event, wherein dense layers of ice form as varying conditions thaw and refreeze the snow, trapping the reindeers' main cold-season nourishment, moss. Goavvi is a outcome of climate change, which is happening up to at an accelerated rate in the Polar region than globally.

Previously, I visited Sara in a remote town during a goavvi winter and accompanied Sámi reindeer keepers on their Arctic vehicles in biting cold as they carried carts of supplementary feed on to the wind-scoured frozen landscape to provide manually. These animals gathered round us, digging the frozen ground in vain for vegetative morsels. This resource-intensive and laborious method is having a significant effect on reindeer husbandry—and on the animals' natural survival. Yet the choice is starvation. As goavvi winters become frequent, reindeer are perishing—a number from hunger, others submerging after falling into streams through thinning ice sheets. In a sense, the work is a memorial to them. "Through the stacking of components, in a way I'm bringing the goavvi to London," says Sara.

Contrasting Belief Systems

The sculpture also highlights the stark divergence between the industrial understanding of energy as a resource to be exploited for gain and survival and the Sámi philosophy of life force as an inherent essence in creatures, people, and nature. This venue's legacy as a fossil fuel plant is linked with this, as is what the Sámi view as eco-imperialism by regional governments. While attempting to be exemplars for sustainable power, Scandinavian countries have disagreed with the Sámi over the development of turbine fields, hydroelectric dams, and digging operations on their ancestral land; the Sámi assert their fundamental freedoms, ways of life, and culture are at risk. "It's hard being such a limited population to defend yourself when the reasons are based on environmental protection," Sara comments. "Resource exploitation has appropriated the discourse of ecology, but yet it's just aiming to find alternative ways to persist in habits of expenditure."

Family Challenges

The artist and her family have personally clashed with the national administration over its increasingly stringent policies on herding. Previously, Sara's brother embarked on a series of unsuccessful lawsuits over the required reduction of his animals, ostensibly to stop excessive feeding. In support, Sara developed a extended series of creations called Pile O'Sápmi comprising a massive drape of four hundred cranial remains, which was displayed at the 2017 event Documenta 14 and later acquired by the public gallery, where it hangs in the entryway.

The Role of Art in Advocacy

For numerous Indigenous people, art appears the only domain in which they can be heard by the global community. Recently, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|