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Guests to Tate Modern are accustomed to unusual encounters in its spacious Turbine Hall. They've relaxed under an artificial sun, slid down helter skelters, and witnessed AI-powered sea creatures hovering through the air. But this marks the first time they will be engaging themselves in the intricate nasal passages of a reindeer. The latest creative installation for this immense space—developed by Indigenous Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—welcomes gallerygoers into a maze-like construction modeled after the scaled-up inside of a reindeer's nose passages. Inside, they can wander around or unwind on skins, tuning in on headphones to Sámi elders sharing stories and knowledge.

Focus on the Nasal Passages

Why the nose? It might seem playful, but the exhibit pays tribute to a rarely recognized biological feat: researchers have discovered that in under a second, the reindeer's nose can heat the incoming air it breathes in by eighty degrees, helping the creature to thrive in harsh Arctic temperatures. Scaling the nose to bigger than a person, Sara notes, "creates a perception of smallness that you as a person are not superior over nature." Sara is a former journalist, young adult author, and rights advocate, who is from a reindeer-herding family in the far north of Norway. "Perhaps that generates the chance to shift your outlook or evoke some humbleness," she adds.

A Celebration to Indigenous Heritage

The labyrinthine structure is among various features in Sara's absorbing commission showcasing the traditions, science, and philosophy of the Sámi, Europe's only Indigenous people. Traditionally mobile, the Sámi number roughly 100,000 people distributed across the Norwegian north, Finland, the Swedish Lapland, and the Kola region (an territory they call Sápmi). They have endured oppression, forced assimilation, and eradication of their language by all four states. By focusing on the reindeer, an creature at the core of the Sámi mythology and origin tale, the art also spotlights the community's challenges connected to the global warming, property rights, and external control.

Meaning in Materials

Along the long entrance ramp, there's a looming, eighty-five-foot structure of reindeer hides entangled by power and light cables. It serves as a symbol for the governance and financial structures limiting the Sámi. Partly a utility pole, part celestial ladder, this component of the artwork, called Goavve-, relates to the Sámi word for an harsh environmental condition, wherein dense sheets of ice appear as changing temperatures melt and solidify again the snow, trapping the reindeers' key cold-season sustenance, fungus. The condition is a consequence of global heating, which is occurring up to at an accelerated rate in the Polar region than globally.

Three years ago, I visited Sara in Guovdageaidnu during a icy season and went with Sámi pastoralists on their snowmobiles in biting cold as they transported trailers of supplementary feed on to the wind-scoured Arctic plains to distribute manually. These animals surrounded round us, digging the icy ground in vain attempts for mossy morsels. This expensive and labour-intensive procedure is having a severe effect on reindeer husbandry—and on the animals' independence. Yet the alternative is death. As these icy periods become commonplace, reindeer are dying—some from hunger, others drowning after plunging into lakes and rivers through prematurely melting ice. In a sense, the art is a monument to them. "Through the stacking of materials, in a way I'm bringing the condition to London," says Sara.

Diverging Worldviews

The installation also emphasizes the sharp difference between the western view of energy as a asset to be exploited for profit and survival and the Sámi outlook of energy as an inherent essence in animals, people, and nature. Tate Modern's history as a fossil fuel plant is tied up in this, as is what the Sámi see as environmental exploitation by regional governments. While attempting to be standard bearers for clean sources, Nordic nations have locked horns with the Sámi over the building of wind energy projects, river barriers, and mines on their traditional territory; the Sámi argue their human rights, ways of life, and way of life are threatened. "It's very difficult being such a tiny group to stand your ground when the arguments are grounded in global sustainability," Sara notes. "Mining practices has co-opted the discourse of sustainability, but still it's just striving to find more suitable ways to persist in patterns of consumption."

Individual Conflicts

The artist and her family have themselves conflicted with the national administration over its tightening regulations on herding. In 2016, Sara's sibling embarked on a series of unsuccessful legal cases over the required reduction of his livestock, ostensibly to stop excessive feeding. To back him, Sara created a multi-year series of creations called Pile O'Sápmi including a massive screen of numerous reindeer skulls, which was exhibited at the 2017's art exhibition Documenta 14 and later obtained by the National Museum of Oslo, where it resides in the entrance.

The Role of Art in Awareness

For many Sámi, art appears the only sphere in which they can be listened to by the global community. Recently, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|