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Attendees to Tate Modern are familiar to unusual experiences in its spacious Turbine Hall. They've basked under an artificial sun, slid down amusement rides, and witnessed automated jellyfish drifting through the air. However this marks the inaugural time they will be immersing themselves in the complex nasal chambers of a reindeer. The newest creative installation for this cavernous space—developed by Native Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—invites visitors into a labyrinthine construction based on the scaled-up interior of a reindeer's nose cavities. Once inside, they can meander around or chill out on skins, listening on earphones to community leaders telling stories and insights.

Focus on the Nasal Passages

Why choose the nasal structure? It might seem whimsical, but the artwork celebrates a obscure scientific wonder: scientists have discovered that in less than one second, the reindeer's nose can raise the temperature of the ambient air it inhales by 80 degrees celsius, enabling the animal to survive in harsh Arctic climates. Enlarging the nose to larger than human size, Sara explains, "creates a feeling of insignificance that you as a individual are not in control over nature." She is a former journalist, children's author, and rights advocate, who comes from a reindeer-herding family in the far north of Norway. "Possibly that generates the chance to alter your perspective or spark some humbleness," she continues.

A Tribute to Traditional Ways

The labyrinthine installation is part of a elements in Sara's immersive exhibition celebrating the traditions, understanding, and worldview of the Sámi, the sole native group in Europe. Semi-nomadic, the Sámi number approximately 100,000 people distributed across the Norwegian north, Finland, the Swedish Lapland, and the Russian Arctic (an region they call Sápmi). They've experienced persecution, forced assimilation, and suppression of their dialect by all four countries. With an emphasis on the reindeer, an creature at the center of the Sámi mythology and founding narrative, the art also highlights the people's struggles associated with the climate crisis, property rights, and imperialism.

Symbolism in Components

On the long access slope, there's a soaring, 26-metre formation of skins ensnared by utility lines. It represents a symbol for the societal frameworks limiting the Sámi. Part pylon, part heavenly staircase, this component of the installation, titled Goavve-, refers to the Sámi word for an severe climatic event, in which thick sheets of ice form as changing conditions thaw and solidify again the snow, trapping the reindeers' primary cold-season nourishment, moss. This phenomenon is a outcome of climate change, which is happening up to much more rapidly in the Arctic than elsewhere.

A few years back, I visited Sara in the Norwegian far north during a goavvi winter and accompanied Sámi pastoralists on their snowmobiles in chilly conditions as they hauled trailers of supplementary feed on to the barren Arctic plains to provide through labor. The herd crowded round us, pawing the frozen ground in futility for lichen-covered pieces. This expensive and demanding process is having a severe effect on herding practices—and on the animals' independence. But the choice is starvation. As these icy periods become commonplace, reindeer are succumbing—some from starvation, others submerging after plunging into streams through prematurely melting ice. To some extent, the art is a memorial to them. "Through the stacking of materials, in a way I'm bringing the goavvi to London," says Sara.

Opposing Belief Systems

The sculpture also emphasizes the stark contrast between the industrial view of energy as a commodity to be utilized for profit and existence and the Sámi outlook of energy as an innate power in animals, people, and the environment. Tate Modern's legacy as a industrial facility is tied up in this, as is what the Sámi see as green colonialism by Nordic countries. As they strive to be leaders for clean sources, Nordic nations have clashed with the Sámi over the construction of windfarms, river barriers, and extraction sites on their ancestral land; the Sámi argue their fundamental freedoms, incomes, and way of life are at risk. "It's hard being such a limited population to stand your ground when the reasons are grounded in saving the world," Sara observes. "Extractivism has adopted the discourse of ecology, but still it's just attempting to find better ways to persist in habits of consumption."

Personal Challenges

She and her relatives have personally disagreed with the state authorities over its increasingly stringent regulations on reindeer management. In 2016, Sara's brother undertook a set of ultimately unsuccessful court actions over the mandatory slaughter of his livestock, apparently to stop vegetation depletion. As a show of solidarity, Sara developed a four-year collection of creations titled Pile O'Sápmi comprising a colossal curtain of four hundred animal bones, which was exhibited at the 2017 art exhibition Documenta 14 and later obtained by the public gallery, where it is displayed in the entryway.

Creative Expression as Activism

For numerous Indigenous people, visual expression appears the sole realm in which they can be understood by people of other nations. Two years ago, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|