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Attendees to Tate Modern are used to surprising encounters in its spacious Turbine Hall. They've sunbathed under an artificial sun, slid down helter skelters, and observed automated sea creatures hovering through the air. Yet this marks the inaugural time they will be immersing themselves in the complex nasal cavities of a reindeer. The current artistic project for this cavernous space—designed by Native Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—invites gallerygoers into a labyrinthine construction modeled after the expanded inside of a reindeer's nose airways. Once inside, they can wander around or chill out on skins, listening on earphones to Sámi elders telling stories and wisdom.

The Significance of the Nose

Why choose the nasal structure? It could appear playful, but the artwork pays tribute to a rarely recognized biological feat: researchers have found that in less than one second, the reindeer's nose can warm the surrounding air it inhales by 80°C, helping the animal to thrive in extreme Arctic climates. Scaling the nose to bigger than a person, Sara says, "creates a perception of inferiority that you as a human being are not superior over nature." Sara is a ex- journalist, children's author, and rights advocate, who is from a reindeer-herding family in the far north of Norway. "Perhaps that creates the potential to shift your viewpoint or trigger some humility," she states.

A Tribute to Indigenous Heritage

The maze-like structure is part of a features in Sara's engaging art project showcasing the culture, science, and worldview of the Sámi, Europe's only Indigenous people. Partially migratory, the Sámi total approximately 100,000 people distributed across the Norwegian north, Finland, the Swedish Lapland, and the Kola region (an area they call Sápmi). They've experienced persecution, cultural suppression, and eradication of their tongue by all four states. With an emphasis on the reindeer, an creature at the heart of the Sámi mythology and creation story, the work also draws attention to the group's struggles connected to the global warming, loss of territory, and imperialism.

Symbolism in Materials

On the lengthy entrance incline, there's a towering, 26-metre sculpture of pelts entangled by electrical wires. It serves as a analogy for the governance and financial structures limiting the Sámi. Part pylon, part heavenly staircase, this part of the exhibit, titled Goavve-, points to the Sámi term for an extreme weather phenomenon, wherein thick coatings of ice develop as fluctuating conditions melt and solidify again the snow, trapping the reindeers' primary winter food, fungus. This phenomenon is a consequence of planetary warming, which is happening up to at an accelerated rate in the Arctic than in other regions.

A few years back, I met with Sara in a remote town during a severe cold period and went with Sámi pastoralists on their motorized sleds in freezing temperatures as they hauled trailers of animal nutrition on to the barren Arctic plains to dispense manually. These animals surrounded round us, digging the slippery ground in vain for mossy morsels. This expensive and laborious process is having a significant effect on herding practices—and on the animals' self-sufficiency. But the alternative is death. As goavvi winters become routine, reindeer are succumbing—some from lack of food, others drowning after plunging into lakes and rivers through prematurely melting ice. To some extent, the art is a monument to them. "With the layering of elements, in a way I'm bringing the phenomenon to London," says Sara.

Diverging Perspectives

The installation also emphasizes the sharp difference between the industrial understanding of power as a asset to be exploited for gain and survival and the Sámi worldview of energy as an inherent essence in animals, people, and the environment. Tate Modern's history as a industrial facility is tied up in this, as is what the Sámi view as eco-imperialism by Scandinavian states. While attempting to be exemplars for renewable energy, Scandinavian countries have disagreed with the Sámi over the building of turbine fields, river barriers, and mines on their native soil; the Sámi argue their fundamental freedoms, ways of life, and way of life are endangered. "It's very difficult being such a small minority to defend yourself when the justifications are grounded in environmental protection," Sara notes. "Extractivism has co-opted the rhetoric of environmentalism, but nonetheless it's just attempting to find alternative ways to continue habits of expenditure."

Personal Conflicts

Sara and her relatives have themselves disagreed with the state authorities over its increasingly stringent policies on herding. In 2016, Sara's brother undertook a series of ultimately unsuccessful lawsuits over the mandatory slaughter of his herd, apparently to stop overgrazing. In support, Sara produced a four-year set of pieces called Pile O'Sápmi including a massive curtain of numerous reindeer skulls, which was exhibited at the 2017's art exhibition Documenta 14 and later obtained by the national institution, where it resides in the entryway.

Creative Expression as Activism

For many Sámi, creative work seems the only realm in which they can be listened to by outsiders. Recently, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|