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Attendees to Tate Modern are accustomed to unexpected experiences in its vast Turbine Hall. They've sunbathed under an man-made sun, slid down amusement rides, and observed AI-powered jellyfish hovering through the air. Yet this marks the first time they will be engaging themselves in the detailed nose passages of a reindeer. The current artistic project for this huge space—created by Native Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—welcomes patrons into a maze-like construction based on the scaled-up interior of a reindeer's nasal airways. Upon entering, they can stroll around or chill out on skins, listening on earphones to community leaders imparting narratives and insights.

The Significance of the Nose

Why the nose? It may appear whimsical, but the installation pays tribute to a rarely recognized scientific wonder: experts have found that in a fraction of a second, the reindeer's nose can raise the temperature of the ambient air it inhales by eighty degrees, enabling the animal to endure in extreme Arctic conditions. Expanding the nose to human-scale dimensions, Sara notes, "generates a sense of insignificance that you as a human being are not dominant over nature." The artist is a ex- writer, children's author, and rights advocate, who hails from a reindeer-herding family in the Norwegian Arctic. "Perhaps that fosters the chance to shift your viewpoint or trigger some humility," she states.

An Homage to Sámi Culture

The maze-like design is one of several components in Sara's immersive art project honoring the heritage, science, and worldview of the Sámi, Europe's only Indigenous people. Semi-nomadic, the Sámi number approximately 100,000 people spread across the Norwegian north, the Finnish Arctic, the Swedish Lapland, and Russia's Kola Peninsula (an territory they call Sápmi). They've experienced oppression, integration policies, and repression of their language by all four nations. By focusing on the reindeer, an animal at the heart of the Sámi cosmology and creation story, the work also spotlights the group's issues connected to the climate crisis, property rights, and colonialism.

Metaphor in Materials

On the extended access slope, there's a towering, eighty-five-foot formation of skins ensnared by utility lines. It represents a analogy for the societal frameworks restricting the Sámi. Part pylon, part celestial ladder, this part of the exhibit, called Goavve-, refers to the Sámi word for an harsh environmental condition, in which thick sheets of ice develop as fluctuating conditions thaw and refreeze the snow, locking in the reindeers' primary cold-season food, moss. The condition is a outcome of planetary warming, which is occurring up to at an accelerated rate in the Far North than in other regions.

A few years back, I traveled to see Sara in the Norwegian far north during a severe cold period and joined Sámi herders on their Arctic vehicles in freezing temperatures as they transported containers of supplementary feed on to the exposed tundra to dispense manually. The reindeer crowded round us, pawing the frozen ground in vain attempts for vegetative pieces. This expensive and laborious process is having a drastic effect on animal rearing—and on the animals' independence. Yet the alternative is malnutrition. As goavvi winters become commonplace, reindeer are succumbing—some from hunger, others drowning after falling into streams through thinning ice sheets. To some extent, the installation is a tribute to them. "With the layering of elements, in a way I'm bringing the phenomenon to London," says Sara.

Opposing Perspectives

The installation also emphasizes the sharp contrast between the western interpretation of electricity as a asset to be utilized for gain and survival and the Sámi worldview of energy as an natural life force in animals, humans, and land. This venue's history as a industrial facility is tied up in this, as is what the Sámi see as environmental exploitation by Scandinavian states. In their efforts to be standard bearers for clean sources, these states have locked horns with the Sámi over the development of windfarms, river barriers, and extraction sites on their ancestral land; the Sámi assert their human rights, ways of life, and culture are threatened. "It's very difficult being such a tiny group to protect your rights when the arguments are grounded in environmental protection," Sara comments. "Mining practices has co-opted the discourse of ecology, but still it's just striving to find more suitable ways to maintain patterns of consumption."

Individual Challenges

The artist and her kin have themselves disagreed with the Norwegian government over its increasingly stringent policies on reindeer management. Previously, Sara's sibling initiated a series of finally failed lawsuits over the required reduction of his animals, ostensibly to stop excessive feeding. In support, Sara created a extended collection of pieces named Pile O'Sápmi comprising a massive drape of 400 animal bones, which was shown at the the art exhibition Documenta 14 and later purchased by the national institution, where it hangs in the entryway.

Creative Expression as Awareness

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