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Attendees to Tate Modern are accustomed to unexpected displays in its expansive Turbine Hall. They have basked under an simulated sun, descended down helter skelters, and observed automated sea creatures drifting through the air. Yet this marks the inaugural time they will be engaging themselves in the complex nasal cavities of a reindeer. The latest artistic project for this cavernous space—created by Native Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—encourages visitors into a labyrinthine design inspired by the enlarged interior of a reindeer's nose passages. Upon entering, they can wander around or unwind on pelts, tuning in on earphones to community leaders imparting stories and knowledge.

Focus on the Nasal Passages

Why the nose? It might sound whimsical, but the exhibit celebrates a obscure biological feat: researchers have uncovered that in less than one second, the reindeer's nose can heat the incoming air it breathes in by eighty degrees, helping the creature to thrive in extreme Arctic climates. Scaling the nose to larger than human size, Sara notes, "creates a perception of inferiority that you as a human being are not in control over nature." The artist is a former reporter, young adult author, and land defender, who hails from a reindeer-herding family in northern Norway. "Perhaps that fosters the potential to shift your outlook or spark some humility," she states.

A Celebration to Traditional Ways

The labyrinthine design is one of several components in Sara's absorbing exhibition honoring the heritage, science, and beliefs of the Sámi, Europe's only Indigenous people. Traditionally mobile, the Sámi number about 100,000 people distributed across the Norwegian north, Finland, the Swedish Lapland, and Russia's Kola Peninsula (an territory they call Sápmi). They have endured discrimination, integration policies, and eradication of their language by all four countries. Through highlighting the reindeer, an creature at the center of the Sámi belief system and creation story, the art also highlights the community's struggles relating to the global warming, property rights, and colonialism.

Meaning in Elements

On the lengthy entrance slope, there's a looming, 26-meter formation of pelts trapped by electrical wires. It represents a metaphor for the political and economic systems limiting the Sámi. Like an electrical tower, part heavenly staircase, this component of the exhibit, titled Goavve-, relates to the Sámi name for an harsh environmental condition, wherein solid coatings of ice appear as varying weather liquefy and solidify again the snow, encasing the reindeers' key winter food, moss. This phenomenon is a outcome of planetary warming, which is happening up to much more rapidly in the Far North than elsewhere.

Three years ago, I met with Sara in a remote town during a goavvi winter and joined Sámi herders on their motorized sleds in freezing temperatures as they transported trailers of food pellets on to the barren tundra to dispense through labor. These animals gathered round us, scratching the icy ground in futility for vegetative bits. This resource-intensive and labour-intensive procedure is having a severe impact on animal rearing—and on the animals' self-sufficiency. Yet the choice is starvation. As goavvi winters become frequent, reindeer are perishing—some from starvation, others drowning after falling into lakes and rivers through thinning ice sheets. In a sense, the art is a monument to them. "By overlapping of elements, in a way I'm introducing the condition to London," says Sara.

Diverging Worldviews

The sculpture also underscores the stark difference between the industrial understanding of energy as a commodity to be utilized for economic benefit and survival and the Sámi worldview of life force as an natural power in creatures, humans, and nature. Tate Modern's legacy as a fossil fuel plant is linked with this, as is what the Sámi consider eco-imperialism by Scandinavian states. As they strive to be standard bearers for renewable energy, Scandinavian countries have clashed with the Sámi over the construction of turbine fields, river barriers, and mines on their ancestral land; the Sámi contend their human rights, ways of life, and traditions are endangered. "It's challenging being such a small minority to protect your rights when the arguments are grounded in global sustainability," Sara notes. "Extractivism has adopted the discourse of ecology, but nonetheless it's just striving to find better ways to maintain habits of use."

Family Struggles

Sara and her kin have personally clashed with the state authorities over its ever-stricter regulations on animal husbandry. Previously, Sara's sibling initiated a series of ultimately unsuccessful court actions over the forced culling of his livestock, apparently to stop excessive feeding. In support, Sara created a four-year collection of artworks titled Pile O'Sápmi including a huge screen of 400 reindeer skulls, which was exhibited at the the show Documenta 14 and later acquired by the public gallery, where it hangs in the lobby.

Creative Expression as Awareness

For numerous Indigenous people, creative work appears the sole domain in which they can be heard by the global community. Two years ago, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|