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Guests to Tate Modern are used to surprising experiences in its spacious Turbine Hall. They've basked under an artificial sun, glided down helter skelters, and witnessed robotic sea creatures floating through the air. But this marks the initial time they will be immersing themselves in the complex nose chambers of a reindeer. The current artistic project for this cavernous space—designed by Indigenous Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—invites patrons into a labyrinthine design based on the expanded interior of a reindeer's nose airways. Inside, they can meander around or chill out on pelts, listening on earphones to Sámi elders telling tales and knowledge.

Focus on the Nasal Passages

What's the focus on the nose? It may seem whimsical, but the exhibit celebrates a little-known natural marvel: researchers have uncovered that in less than one second, the reindeer's nose can raise the temperature of the ambient air it inhales by eighty degrees, enabling the creature to survive in extreme Arctic conditions. Scaling the nose to larger than human size, Sara says, "produces a feeling of insignificance that you as a person are not superior over nature." The artist is a former reporter, young adult author, and environmental activist, who is from a reindeer-herding family in the Norwegian Arctic. "Maybe that fosters the potential to shift your perspective or evoke some humbleness," she continues.

An Homage to Sámi Culture

The labyrinthine installation is part of a elements in Sara's immersive art project showcasing the heritage, knowledge, and beliefs of the Sámi, the sole native group in Europe. Partially migratory, the Sámi number roughly 100,000 people ranged across the Norwegian north, Finland, Sweden, and the Kola region (an area they call Sápmi). They have faced persecution, integration policies, and eradication of their dialect by all four countries. By focusing on the reindeer, an creature at the heart of the Sámi belief system and founding narrative, the art also spotlights the group's challenges associated with the climate crisis, loss of territory, and colonialism.

Metaphor in Materials

At the long entry incline, there's a soaring, eighty-five-foot sculpture of skins ensnared by power and light cables. It represents a analogy for the political and economic systems limiting the Sámi. Partly a utility pole, part spiritual ascent, this section of the artwork, called Goavve-, refers to the Sámi name for an severe climatic event, whereby thick coatings of ice appear as changing weather melt and ice over the snow, trapping the reindeers' key cold-season nourishment, lichen. Goavvi is a consequence of climate change, which is occurring up to much more rapidly in the Arctic than in other regions.

A few years back, I visited Sara in a remote town during a goavvi winter and joined Sámi herders on their motorized sleds in biting cold as they carried containers of animal nutrition on to the wind-scoured Arctic plains to provide by hand. These animals surrounded round us, scratching the frozen ground in futility for vegetative morsels. This costly and demanding procedure is having a severe influence on herding practices—and on the animals' self-sufficiency. However the choice is malnutrition. As goavvi winters become commonplace, reindeer are succumbing—a number from lack of food, others submerging after plunging into streams through prematurely melting ice. To some extent, the work is a memorial to them. "Through the stacking of elements, in a way I'm transporting the phenomenon to London," says Sara.

Diverging Perspectives

The installation also emphasizes the sharp contrast between the modern understanding of electricity as a resource to be utilized for profit and livelihood and the Sámi outlook of life force as an inherent life force in animals, individuals, and nature. The gallery's legacy as a fossil fuel plant is connected to this, as is what the Sámi view as green colonialism by regional governments. While attempting to be leaders for sustainable power, these states have clashed with the Sámi over the development of windfarms, water power facilities, and extraction sites on their ancestral land; the Sámi assert their legal protections, ways of life, and traditions are threatened. "It's hard being such a small minority to defend yourself when the reasons are rooted in saving the world," Sara observes. "Resource exploitation has appropriated the language of sustainability, but still it's just striving to find alternative ways to continue patterns of expenditure."

Personal Struggles

Sara and her relatives have personally disagreed with the national administration over its tightening rules on reindeer management. In 2016, Sara's sibling undertook a set of unsuccessful legal cases over the required reduction of his animals, supposedly to stop vegetation depletion. In support, Sara developed a extended series of pieces named Pile O'Sápmi including a huge drape of 400 animal bones, which was exhibited at the 2017 event Documenta 14 and later purchased by the national institution, where it resides in the lobby.

Art as Advocacy

For many Sámi, art seems the only domain in which they can be listened to by the global community. Two years ago, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|