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Attendees to Tate Modern are familiar to surprising encounters in its spacious Turbine Hall. They have sunbathed under an simulated sun, slid down helter skelters, and seen automated jellyfish floating through the air. Yet this marks the initial time they will be immersing themselves in the intricate nasal cavities of a reindeer. The newest artistic project for this cavernous space—created by Indigenous Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—encourages visitors into a winding construction modeled after the enlarged inside of a reindeer's nose passages. Inside, they can meander around or chill out on pelts, tuning in on headphones to tribal seniors imparting narratives and knowledge.

The Significance of the Nose

Why choose the nasal structure? It could sound quirky, but the installation pays tribute to a rarely recognized biological feat: experts have uncovered that in less than one second, the reindeer's nose can heat the surrounding air it breathes in by 80°C, helping the animal to thrive in inhospitable Arctic conditions. Enlarging the nose to human-scale dimensions, Sara notes, "produces a feeling of insignificance that you as a individual are not in control over nature." The artist is a ex- writer, young adult author, and rights advocate, who is from a pastoral family in northern Norway. "Possibly that creates the possibility to alter your perspective or spark some modesty," she adds.

A Tribute to Sámi Culture

The winding design is one of several components in Sara's immersive commission celebrating the traditions, knowledge, and philosophy of the Sámi, Europe's only Indigenous people. Traditionally mobile, the Sámi number approximately 100,000 people ranged across the Norwegian north, the Finnish Arctic, Sweden, and the Russian Arctic (an territory they call Sápmi). They have endured persecution, integration policies, and suppression of their tongue by all four states. Through highlighting the reindeer, an creature at the heart of the Sámi belief system and creation story, the installation also spotlights the people's challenges connected to the global warming, loss of territory, and imperialism.

Symbolism in Components

On the extended entrance incline, there's a soaring, 26-meter sculpture of skins trapped by utility lines. It serves as a analogy for the political and economic systems constraining the Sámi. Partly a utility pole, part celestial ladder, this component of the exhibit, titled Goavve-, relates to the Sámi name for an extreme weather phenomenon, whereby dense sheets of ice develop as varying conditions liquefy and ice over the snow, encasing the reindeers' main cold-season food, moss. The condition is a consequence of global heating, which is taking place up to much more rapidly in the Polar region than elsewhere.

Previously, I visited Sara in a remote town during a icy season and joined Sámi pastoralists on their snowmobiles in chilly conditions as they hauled containers of food pellets on to the wind-scoured Arctic plains to dispense manually. The reindeer crowded round us, digging the icy ground in futility for lichen-covered morsels. This costly and labour-intensive method is having a drastic impact on reindeer husbandry—and on the animals' self-sufficiency. Yet the choice is starvation. As goavvi winters become frequent, reindeer are succumbing—a number from starvation, others suffocating after plunging into streams through unstable frozen surfaces. To some extent, the installation is a tribute to them. "With the layering of elements, in a way I'm introducing the goavvi to London," says Sara.

Opposing Worldviews

The installation also emphasizes the stark contrast between the modern interpretation of power as a commodity to be utilized for profit and existence and the Sámi philosophy of energy as an innate life force in animals, humans, and nature. This venue's legacy as a industrial facility is linked with this, as is what the Sámi consider eco-imperialism by Scandinavian states. In their efforts to be standard bearers for renewable energy, Scandinavian countries have locked horns with the Sámi over the development of windfarms, hydroelectric dams, and digging operations on their traditional territory; the Sámi assert their fundamental freedoms, incomes, and traditions are endangered. "It's hard being such a limited population to stand your ground when the justifications are based on saving the world," Sara observes. "Resource exploitation has adopted the discourse of environmentalism, but yet it's just striving to find alternative ways to continue practices of consumption."

Family Conflicts

She and her relatives have personally conflicted with the national administration over its tightening policies on reindeer management. In 2016, Sara's sibling embarked on a series of ultimately unsuccessful court actions over the required reduction of his livestock, supposedly to stop vegetation depletion. As a show of solidarity, Sara created a extended set of pieces titled Pile O'Sápmi featuring a colossal drape of numerous reindeer skulls, which was exhibited at the 2017 event Documenta 14 and later acquired by the National Museum of Oslo, where it resides in the entryway.

Creative Expression as Awareness

Among the community, visual expression is the sole sphere in which they can be listened to by the global community. Two years ago, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|