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Attendees to Tate Modern are familiar to unexpected encounters in its vast Turbine Hall. They've sunbathed under an artificial sun, descended down helter skelters, and witnessed automated jellyfish floating through the air. However this marks the first time they will be immersing themselves in the detailed nose chambers of a reindeer. The newest creative installation for this immense space—developed by Indigenous Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—welcomes gallerygoers into a winding design based on the scaled-up inside of a reindeer's nasal cavities. Once inside, they can stroll around or relax on reindeer hides, listening on earphones to Sámi elders imparting stories and knowledge.

Why the Nose?

What's the focus on the nose? It may sound quirky, but the exhibit honors a little-known scientific wonder: researchers have discovered that in under a second, the reindeer's nose can heat the incoming air it inhales by eighty degrees, enabling the creature to endure in harsh Arctic climates. Scaling the nose to larger than human size, Sara explains, "generates a feeling of insignificance that you as a human being are not in control over nature." The artist is a former writer, children's author, and land defender, who hails from a reindeer-herding family in the Norwegian Arctic. "Possibly that creates the potential to change your viewpoint or spark some humbleness," she states.

A Tribute to Sámi Culture

The maze-like installation is one of several elements in Sara's engaging art project showcasing the culture, knowledge, and worldview of the Sámi, the continent's original inhabitants. Semi-nomadic, the Sámi number about 100,000 people spread across northern Norway, Finland, Sweden, and the Kola region (an area they call Sápmi). They've faced persecution, forced assimilation, and eradication of their language by all four countries. With an emphasis on the reindeer, an creature at the heart of the Sámi belief system and creation story, the installation also spotlights the people's struggles connected to the climate crisis, loss of territory, and imperialism.

Symbolism in Materials

Along the extended entrance incline, there's a towering, eighty-five-foot formation of skins ensnared by utility lines. It can be read as a analogy for the governance and financial structures limiting the Sámi. Part pylon, part spiritual ascent, this section of the artwork, called Goavve-, relates to the Sámi word for an severe climatic event, in which thick coatings of ice form as varying conditions liquefy and solidify again the snow, locking in the reindeers' key winter sustenance, moss. Goavvi is a consequence of global heating, which is occurring up to four times faster in the Polar region than globally.

Previously, I traveled to see Sara in the Norwegian far north during a icy season and joined Sámi reindeer keepers on their snowmobiles in chilly conditions as they transported carts of supplementary feed on to the wind-scoured tundra to distribute manually. The herd gathered round us, scratching the icy ground in vain attempts for vegetative morsels. This resource-intensive and labour-intensive procedure is having a significant influence on reindeer husbandry—and on the animals' independence. However the choice is malnutrition. As goavvi winters become frequent, reindeer are perishing—some from hunger, others suffocating after sinking in streams through thinning ice sheets. On one level, the work is a memorial to them. "By overlapping of elements, in a way I'm transporting the condition to London," says Sara.

Contrasting Worldviews

The installation also highlights the stark difference between the modern interpretation of electricity as a asset to be utilized for gain and survival and the Sámi worldview of vitality as an natural essence in creatures, humans, and land. This venue's past as a fossil fuel plant is tied up in this, as is what the Sámi consider green colonialism by regional governments. As they strive to be exemplars for renewable energy, Nordic nations have disagreed with the Sámi over the construction of turbine fields, river barriers, and mines on their traditional territory; the Sámi argue their legal protections, livelihoods, and way of life are threatened. "It's challenging being such a small minority to defend yourself when the justifications are rooted in global sustainability," Sara observes. "Extractivism has adopted the language of ecology, but nonetheless it's just attempting to find better ways to persist in practices of expenditure."

Personal Struggles

The artist and her kin have themselves conflicted with the national administration over its increasingly stringent policies on animal husbandry. A few years ago, Sara's sibling initiated a sequence of unsuccessful lawsuits over the required reduction of his livestock, apparently to stop vegetation depletion. To back him, Sara developed a four-year set of creations named Pile O'Sápmi comprising a massive screen of 400 reindeer skulls, which was exhibited at the 2017's show Documenta 14 and later obtained by the National Museum of Oslo, where it resides in the entryway.

Creative Expression as Activism

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