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Guests to Tate Modern are accustomed to unusual experiences in its vast Turbine Hall. They have sunbathed under an artificial sun, slid down amusement rides, and witnessed automated sea creatures hovering through the air. Yet this marks the initial time they will be engaging themselves in the complex nose passages of a reindeer. The latest artist commission for this cavernous space—developed by Indigenous Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—invites gallerygoers into a labyrinthine structure based on the expanded inside of a reindeer's nose airways. Inside, they can meander around or chill out on skins, tuning in on headphones to Sámi elders telling stories and knowledge.

The Significance of the Nose

Why choose the nasal structure? It might seem whimsical, but the exhibit celebrates a rarely recognized scientific wonder: scientists have discovered that in less than one second, the reindeer's nose can heat the ambient air it inhales by 80 degrees celsius, helping the creature to survive in extreme Arctic temperatures. Scaling the nose to bigger than a person, Sara notes, "produces a feeling of insignificance that you as a person are not dominant over nature." The artist is a ex- reporter, writer for kids, and environmental activist, who comes from a pastoral family in northern Norway. "Maybe that fosters the chance to shift your outlook or evoke some modesty," she states.

A Celebration to Indigenous Heritage

The maze-like structure is one of several components in Sara's immersive art project celebrating the heritage, knowledge, and worldview of the Sámi, Europe's only Indigenous people. Semi-nomadic, the Sámi count about 100,000 people spread across the Norwegian north, the Finnish Arctic, the Swedish Lapland, and the Russian Arctic (an territory they call Sápmi). They have endured persecution, forced assimilation, and repression of their tongue by all four states. Through highlighting the reindeer, an creature at the heart of the Sámi belief system and founding narrative, the work also spotlights the people's challenges relating to the climate crisis, property rights, and colonialism.

Meaning in Components

Along the long entrance slope, there's a soaring, eighty-five-foot formation of pelts ensnared by electrical wires. It serves as a symbol for the governance and financial structures limiting the Sámi. Part pylon, part heavenly staircase, this component of the artwork, called Goavve-, relates to the Sámi word for an harsh environmental condition, wherein dense sheets of ice appear as fluctuating temperatures thaw and refreeze the snow, locking in the reindeers' main cold-season nourishment, fungus. This phenomenon is a outcome of climate change, which is taking place up to four times faster in the Far North than globally.

A few years back, I visited Sara in the Norwegian far north during a icy season and joined Sámi reindeer keepers on their motorized sleds in biting cold as they carried trailers of food pellets on to the wind-scoured tundra to distribute by hand. The herd surrounded round us, scratching the slippery ground in vain attempts for mossy bits. This costly and laborious procedure is having a significant influence on reindeer husbandry—and on the animals' independence. However the alternative is starvation. As these icy periods become routine, reindeer are dying—some from starvation, others drowning after plunging into water bodies through thinning ice sheets. To some extent, the installation is a memorial to them. "Through the stacking of materials, in a way I'm transporting the condition to London," says Sara.

Contrasting Perspectives

The installation also highlights the sharp difference between the modern view of energy as a commodity to be utilized for profit and livelihood and the Sámi worldview of life force as an inherent life force in animals, individuals, and nature. Tate Modern's history as a fossil fuel plant is connected to this, as is what the Sámi see as eco-imperialism by regional governments. As they strive to be standard bearers for clean sources, these states have disagreed with the Sámi over the development of wind energy projects, river barriers, and digging operations on their native soil; the Sámi assert their fundamental freedoms, ways of life, and traditions are at risk. "It's hard being such a tiny group to stand your ground when the reasons are grounded in environmental protection," Sara comments. "Extractivism has adopted the language of sustainability, but yet it's just striving to find alternative ways to maintain patterns of expenditure."

Family Challenges

She and her relatives have themselves conflicted with the state authorities over its increasingly stringent regulations on reindeer management. In 2016, Sara's brother undertook a sequence of ultimately unsuccessful lawsuits over the forced culling of his herd, apparently to stop overgrazing. As a show of solidarity, Sara produced a four-year set of pieces called Pile O'Sápmi featuring a huge drape of numerous animal bones, which was displayed at the 2017 show Documenta 14 and later acquired by the public gallery, where it resides in the entrance.

Art as Awareness

For numerous Indigenous people, creative work is the sole domain in which they can be listened to by outsiders. Recently, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|