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Attendees to Tate Modern are used to unusual encounters in its spacious Turbine Hall. They've relaxed under an artificial sun, slid down spiral slides, and observed AI-powered sea creatures floating through the air. Yet this marks the inaugural time they will be venturing themselves in the detailed nose cavities of a reindeer. The latest artistic project for this huge space—designed by Native Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—invites gallerygoers into a maze-like construction based on the expanded interior of a reindeer's nasal passages. Once inside, they can wander around or chill out on reindeer hides, listening on headphones to tribal seniors imparting narratives and wisdom.

Why the Nose?

What's the focus on the nose? It could appear whimsical, but the installation pays tribute to a little-known scientific wonder: experts have discovered that in less than one second, the reindeer's nose can warm the incoming air it takes in by 80 degrees celsius, enabling the creature to thrive in extreme Arctic conditions. Scaling the nose to human-scale dimensions, Sara explains, "generates a perception of smallness that you as a person are not dominant over nature." The artist is a former journalist, children's author, and rights advocate, who is from a herding family in northern Norway. "Maybe that creates the potential to change your perspective or evoke some humility," she states.

An Homage to Indigenous Heritage

The winding design is one of several features in Sara's absorbing art project showcasing the heritage, science, and philosophy of the Sámi, Europe's only Indigenous people. Partially migratory, the Sámi total roughly 100,000 people distributed across the Norwegian north, Finland, Sweden, and the Russian Arctic (an area they call Sápmi). They've experienced oppression, integration policies, and eradication of their dialect by all four countries. With an emphasis on the reindeer, an animal at the core of the Sámi belief system and origin tale, the art also spotlights the group's challenges relating to the environmental emergency, property rights, and colonialism.

Meaning in Components

Along the long access slope, there's a soaring, eighty-five-foot structure of reindeer hides ensnared by utility lines. It represents a metaphor for the governance and financial structures limiting the Sámi. Part pylon, part spiritual ascent, this section of the exhibit, called Goavve-, relates to the Sámi term for an harsh environmental condition, wherein solid layers of ice appear as fluctuating weather liquefy and solidify again the snow, trapping the reindeers' primary cold-season food, lichen. The condition is a outcome of planetary warming, which is taking place up to four times faster in the Polar region than in other regions.

Three years ago, I visited Sara in a remote town during a icy season and accompanied Sámi pastoralists on their Arctic vehicles in biting cold as they carried carts of supplementary feed on to the barren tundra to dispense by hand. These animals surrounded round us, digging the frozen ground in vain for lichen-covered morsels. This costly and demanding process is having a drastic impact on reindeer husbandry—and on the animals' independence. But the alternative is death. As goavvi winters become commonplace, reindeer are succumbing—a number from lack of food, others drowning after falling into streams through unstable frozen surfaces. To some extent, the work is a memorial to them. "By overlapping of elements, in a way I'm bringing the goavvi to London," says Sara.

Contrasting Perspectives

The sculpture also highlights the clear contrast between the modern view of electricity as a asset to be exploited for economic benefit and existence and the Sámi outlook of energy as an natural essence in creatures, individuals, and nature. This venue's legacy as a industrial facility is tied up in this, as is what the Sámi see as environmental exploitation by Scandinavian states. While attempting to be standard bearers for sustainable power, Scandinavian countries have disagreed with the Sámi over the development of windfarms, hydroelectric dams, and mines on their ancestral land; the Sámi contend their fundamental freedoms, incomes, and traditions are endangered. "It's hard being such a small minority to stand your ground when the arguments are grounded in environmental protection," Sara observes. "Extractivism has adopted the rhetoric of ecology, but yet it's just aiming to find more suitable ways to maintain patterns of use."

Personal Struggles

She and her kin have personally disagreed with the state authorities over its ever-stricter regulations on animal husbandry. A few years ago, Sara's brother embarked on a set of finally failed court actions over the mandatory slaughter of his livestock, apparently to stop overgrazing. As a show of solidarity, Sara created a extended collection of creations titled Pile O'Sápmi featuring a colossal screen of 400 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.

Creative Expression as Activism

For many Sámi, art seems the exclusive realm in which they can be heard by people of other nations. Recently, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|