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Visitors to Tate Modern are familiar to unusual displays in its vast Turbine Hall. They have relaxed under an simulated sun, glided down helter skelters, and witnessed AI-powered jellyfish drifting through the air. Yet this marks the inaugural time they will be venturing themselves in the complex nasal passages of a reindeer. The latest artistic project for this huge space—designed by Indigenous Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—invites visitors into a labyrinthine design based on the enlarged inside of a reindeer's nasal passages. Once inside, they can stroll around or relax on pelts, listening on earphones to Sámi elders imparting narratives and insights.

Why the Nose?

Why the nose? It might seem whimsical, but the exhibit pays tribute to a rarely recognized scientific wonder: scientists have uncovered that in less than one second, the reindeer's nose can heat the surrounding air it takes in by 80 degrees celsius, allowing the creature to endure in extreme Arctic climates. Scaling the nose to bigger than a person, Sara notes, "generates a feeling of insignificance that you as a person are not dominant over nature." Sara is a ex- journalist, writer for kids, and land defender, who comes from a pastoral family in the Norwegian Arctic. "Possibly that generates the possibility to alter your perspective or spark some humility," she adds.

An Homage to Sámi Culture

The winding structure is one of several components in Sara's engaging art project celebrating the culture, understanding, and worldview of the Sámi, the sole native group in Europe. Semi-nomadic, the Sámi number roughly 100,000 people distributed across the Norwegian north, the Finnish Arctic, Sweden, and the Russian Arctic (an area they call Sápmi). They've endured oppression, integration policies, and repression of their tongue by all four nations. By focusing on the reindeer, an creature at the center of the Sámi belief system and founding narrative, the installation also draws attention to the community's challenges relating to the global warming, property rights, and imperialism.

Meaning in Elements

At the extended entry ramp, there's a towering, 26-meter structure of reindeer hides entangled by utility lines. It can be read as a metaphor for the governance and financial structures constraining the Sámi. Like an electrical tower, part heavenly staircase, this component of the installation, called Goavve-, relates to the Sámi word for an harsh environmental condition, in which dense sheets of ice appear as changing weather thaw and refreeze the snow, encasing the reindeers' key winter sustenance, moss. This phenomenon is a result of planetary warming, which is happening up to four times faster in the Far North than in other regions.

Previously, I traveled to see Sara in the Norwegian far north during a goavvi winter and accompanied Sámi herders on their Arctic vehicles in biting cold as they transported trailers of food pellets on to the exposed tundra to distribute by hand. These animals crowded round us, digging the frozen ground in futility for mossy pieces. This resource-intensive and demanding procedure is having a significant influence on herding practices—and on the animals' natural survival. Yet the choice is malnutrition. As these icy periods become routine, reindeer are perishing—some from lack of food, others drowning after sinking in streams through unstable frozen surfaces. To some extent, the art is a monument to them. "Through the stacking of elements, in a way I'm bringing the goavvi to London," says Sara.

Contrasting Perspectives

The sculpture also underscores the clear contrast between the industrial understanding of power as a asset to be harnessed for economic benefit and existence and the Sámi outlook of vitality as an inherent power in creatures, people, and land. The gallery's legacy as a coal and oil power station is linked with this, as is what the Sámi see as eco-imperialism by regional governments. As they strive to be standard bearers for clean sources, Nordic nations have locked horns with the Sámi over the building of turbine fields, water power facilities, and mines on their ancestral land; the Sámi assert their fundamental freedoms, livelihoods, and way of life are endangered. "It's challenging being such a small minority to defend yourself when the justifications are based on saving the world," Sara notes. "Resource exploitation has co-opted the language of sustainability, but still it's just striving to find alternative ways to persist in patterns of use."

Individual Challenges

Sara and her kin have personally conflicted with the state authorities over its tightening rules on animal husbandry. A few years ago, Sara's brother undertook a set of ultimately unsuccessful court actions over the required reduction of his livestock, supposedly to stop vegetation depletion. To back him, Sara developed a multi-year series of artworks called Pile O'Sápmi comprising a colossal drape of 400 cranial remains, which was exhibited at the 2017's art exhibition Documenta 14 and later obtained by the National Museum of Oslo, where it resides in the lobby.

Creative Expression as Advocacy

For many Sámi, art is the sole realm in which they can be understood by outsiders. Recently, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|