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Guests to Tate Modern are used to unexpected experiences in its expansive Turbine Hall. They have sunbathed under an man-made sun, glided down spiral slides, and seen robotic jellyfish floating through the air. Yet this marks the inaugural time they will be immersing themselves in the intricate nasal chambers of a reindeer. The latest artist commission for this huge space—developed by Native Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—invites visitors into a labyrinthine structure inspired by the enlarged inside of a reindeer's nasal cavities. Upon entering, they can wander around or chill out on reindeer hides, tuning in on earphones to Sámi elders sharing tales and insights.

Why the Nose?

Why the nose? It could sound quirky, but the installation celebrates a little-known natural marvel: experts have found that in under a second, the reindeer's nose can raise the temperature of the surrounding air it inhales by eighty degrees, helping the animal to endure in inhospitable Arctic conditions. Scaling the nose to bigger than a person, Sara notes, "produces a feeling of smallness that you as a human being are not superior over nature." She is a ex- journalist, young adult author, and land defender, who comes from a pastoral family in northern Norway. "Possibly that creates the chance to shift your viewpoint or spark some modesty," she continues.

A Celebration to Traditional Ways

The labyrinthine design is one of several components in Sara's absorbing exhibition celebrating the culture, understanding, and beliefs of the Sámi, the sole native group in Europe. Semi-nomadic, the Sámi total approximately 100,000 people ranged across northern Norway, the Finnish Arctic, the Swedish Lapland, and the Russian Arctic (an region they call Sápmi). They have experienced oppression, integration policies, and repression of their tongue 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 draws attention to the community's challenges connected to the climate crisis, land dispossession, and colonialism.

Metaphor in Elements

Along the extended entrance slope, there's a towering, 26-meter formation of pelts ensnared by electrical wires. It can be read as a analogy for the societal frameworks constraining the Sámi. Like an electrical tower, part celestial ladder, this component of the installation, named Goavve-, points to the Sámi word for an severe climatic event, wherein dense sheets of ice form as varying weather melt and solidify again the snow, encasing the reindeers' key winter sustenance, lichen. The condition is a outcome of climate change, which is happening up to much more rapidly in the Far North than in other regions.

Previously, I visited Sara in Guovdageaidnu during a goavvi winter and went with Sámi herders on their Arctic vehicles in freezing temperatures as they transported trailers of supplementary feed on to the wind-scoured tundra to dispense by hand. These animals surrounded round us, digging the icy ground in vain attempts for mossy pieces. This costly and labour-intensive process is having a drastic influence on animal rearing—and on the animals' independence. Yet the other option is starvation. As goavvi winters become frequent, reindeer are dying—some from hunger, others submerging after plunging into water bodies through prematurely melting ice. In a sense, the installation is a monument to them. "Through the stacking of components, in a way I'm introducing the goavvi to London," says Sara.

Opposing Belief Systems

This artwork also highlights the clear divergence between the modern understanding of energy as a resource to be exploited for economic benefit and existence and the Sámi philosophy of life force as an natural essence in animals, people, and the environment. Tate Modern's legacy as a industrial facility is connected to this, as is what the Sámi view as environmental exploitation by regional governments. While attempting to be standard bearers for sustainable power, Scandinavian countries have locked horns with the Sámi over the building of turbine fields, river barriers, and mines on their ancestral land; the Sámi contend their human rights, livelihoods, and traditions are threatened. "It's very difficult being such a tiny group to defend yourself when the arguments are rooted in global sustainability," Sara comments. "Resource exploitation has adopted the language of ecology, but still it's just aiming to find more suitable ways to maintain patterns of consumption."

Personal Challenges

Sara and her family have themselves disagreed with the state authorities over its tightening policies on animal husbandry. A few years ago, Sara's sibling undertook a series of unsuccessful lawsuits over the required reduction of his livestock, apparently to stop vegetation depletion. As a show of solidarity, Sara developed a extended set of pieces called Pile O'Sápmi comprising a colossal drape of numerous cranial remains, which was shown at the 2017's show Documenta 14 and later purchased by the national institution, where it hangs in the lobby.

Creative Expression as Awareness

For numerous Indigenous people, art appears the only domain in which they can be heard by people of other nations. Two years ago, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|