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Guests to Tate Modern are familiar to unexpected experiences in its vast Turbine Hall. They've sunbathed under an man-made sun, slid down spiral slides, and seen automated jellyfish floating through the air. However this marks the initial time they will be engaging themselves in the detailed nose passages of a reindeer. The newest creative installation for this huge space—created by Native Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—invites visitors into a labyrinthine design based on the enlarged inside of a reindeer's nasal cavities. Once inside, they can meander around or relax on pelts, tuning in on headphones to community leaders imparting narratives and wisdom.

Focus on the Nasal Passages

Why choose the nasal structure? It may seem playful, but the artwork celebrates a little-known scientific wonder: experts have discovered that in a fraction of a second, the reindeer's nose can heat the surrounding air it breathes in by eighty degrees, allowing the creature to survive in harsh Arctic temperatures. Enlarging the nose to larger than human size, Sara says, "generates a perception of inferiority that you as a human being are not dominant over nature." Sara is a ex- reporter, young adult author, and environmental activist, who hails from a herding family in northern Norway. "Maybe that creates the chance to alter your perspective or evoke some modesty," she continues.

A Tribute to Traditional Ways

The maze-like installation is part of a components in Sara's absorbing art project celebrating the culture, science, and philosophy of the Sámi, Europe's only Indigenous people. Semi-nomadic, the Sámi number roughly 100,000 people spread across the Norwegian north, the Finnish Arctic, Sweden, and the Russian Arctic (an region they call Sápmi). They have endured oppression, forced assimilation, and repression of their language by all four countries. By focusing on the reindeer, an creature at the core of the Sámi belief system and creation story, the art also highlights the people's challenges associated with the climate crisis, land dispossession, and external control.

Symbolism in Elements

On the long access incline, there's a towering, 26-metre structure of reindeer hides entangled by utility lines. It can be read as a analogy for the societal frameworks limiting the Sámi. Part pylon, part spiritual ascent, this section of the artwork, named Goavve-, refers to the Sámi name for an severe climatic event, wherein thick sheets of ice develop as varying conditions melt and solidify again the snow, encasing the reindeers' primary cold-season nourishment, moss. Goavvi is a outcome of global heating, which is occurring up to much more rapidly in the Arctic than in other regions.

A few years back, I met with Sara in Guovdageaidnu during a icy season and accompanied Sámi reindeer keepers on their snowmobiles in freezing temperatures as they hauled trailers of animal nutrition on to the barren Arctic plains to provide through labor. The reindeer surrounded round us, digging the frozen ground in futility for mossy bits. This costly and labour-intensive method is having a significant effect on reindeer husbandry—and on the animals' natural survival. But the alternative is malnutrition. As goavvi winters become frequent, reindeer are dying—some from lack of food, others suffocating after plunging into lakes and rivers through unstable frozen surfaces. On one level, the work is a tribute to them. "Through the stacking of materials, in a way I'm introducing the phenomenon to London," says Sara.

Contrasting Belief Systems

The installation also emphasizes the sharp divergence between the modern view of power as a commodity to be harnessed for profit and survival and the Sámi outlook of vitality as an inherent life force in creatures, people, and nature. The gallery's legacy as a fossil fuel plant is connected to this, as is what the Sámi view as green colonialism by Nordic countries. As they strive to be standard bearers for clean sources, Nordic nations have clashed with the Sámi over the building of turbine fields, water power facilities, and mines on their ancestral land; the Sámi assert their fundamental freedoms, ways of life, and traditions are at risk. "It's very difficult being such a small minority to defend yourself when the justifications are grounded in global sustainability," Sara observes. "Extractivism has adopted the discourse of sustainability, but yet it's just attempting to find more suitable ways to continue habits of consumption."

Individual Struggles

The artist and her kin have themselves conflicted with the national administration over its tightening policies on animal husbandry. A few years ago, Sara's sibling undertook a set of unsuccessful lawsuits over the required reduction of his herd, apparently to stop overgrazing. To back him, Sara produced a multi-year set of pieces called Pile O'Sápmi comprising a huge drape of numerous reindeer skulls, which was displayed at the 2017's show Documenta 14 and later purchased by the national institution, where it is displayed in the lobby.

Art as Activism

For many Sámi, creative work seems the sole sphere in which they can be heard by outsiders. Recently, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|