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Guests to Tate Modern are used to unexpected encounters in its vast Turbine Hall. They've basked under an artificial sun, descended down spiral slides, and observed automated jellyfish hovering through the air. Yet this marks the initial time they will be engaging themselves in the detailed nasal passages of a reindeer. The latest artist commission for this cavernous space—developed by Indigenous Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—invites gallerygoers into a labyrinthine construction inspired by the scaled-up inside of a reindeer's nasal airways. Once inside, they can meander around or relax on reindeer hides, listening on headphones to tribal seniors imparting tales and insights.

The Significance of the Nose

Why the nose? It may appear quirky, but the installation honors a rarely recognized natural marvel: researchers have uncovered that in less than one second, the reindeer's nose can raise the temperature of the surrounding air it breathes in by 80°C, allowing the creature to endure in extreme Arctic conditions. Expanding the nose to human-scale dimensions, Sara notes, "creates a perception of smallness that you as a individual are not in control over nature." Sara is a former writer, children's author, and environmental activist, who hails from a reindeer-herding family in the Norwegian Arctic. "Perhaps that creates the chance to shift your outlook or trigger some humbleness," she states.

A Tribute to Traditional Ways

The winding installation is one of several features in Sara's absorbing art project showcasing the traditions, understanding, and beliefs of the Sámi, the sole native group in Europe. Partially migratory, the Sámi count roughly 100,000 people spread across northern Norway, Finland, the Swedish Lapland, and the Kola region (an territory they call Sápmi). They've faced discrimination, cultural suppression, and eradication of their tongue by all four nations. By focusing on the reindeer, an animal at the core of the Sámi belief system and founding narrative, the installation also highlights the group's issues connected to the climate crisis, property rights, and external control.

Meaning in Materials

On the extended entry slope, there's a soaring, 26-meter structure of reindeer hides trapped by electrical wires. It represents a symbol for the governance and financial structures constraining the Sámi. Part pylon, part heavenly staircase, this part of the artwork, titled Goavve-, points to the Sámi word for an harsh environmental condition, in which thick sheets of ice form as fluctuating conditions melt and ice over the snow, trapping the reindeers' key cold-season food, lichen. The condition is a outcome of planetary warming, which is occurring up to at an accelerated rate in the Polar region than globally.

Three years ago, I met with Sara in Guovdageaidnu during a goavvi winter and joined Sámi reindeer keepers on their motorized sleds in biting cold as they hauled trailers of animal nutrition on to the exposed Arctic plains to provide by hand. The reindeer gathered round us, scratching the icy ground in futility for vegetative morsels. This costly and labour-intensive process is having a drastic influence on reindeer husbandry—and on the animals' natural survival. But the alternative is starvation. When such conditions become commonplace, reindeer are perishing—some from starvation, others drowning after sinking in lakes and rivers through prematurely melting ice. To some extent, the installation is a monument to them. "Through the stacking of materials, in a way I'm bringing the condition to London," says Sara.

Diverging Belief Systems

The sculpture also underscores the clear divergence between the western understanding of electricity as a asset to be exploited for economic benefit and survival and the Sámi outlook of vitality as an innate power in animals, humans, and nature. The gallery's legacy as a fossil fuel plant is tied up in this, as is what the Sámi consider eco-imperialism by Scandinavian states. While attempting to be leaders for renewable energy, Nordic nations have locked horns with the Sámi over the building of windfarms, hydroelectric dams, and mines on their native soil; the Sámi argue their fundamental freedoms, incomes, and traditions are endangered. "It's hard being such a small minority to defend yourself when the reasons are rooted in global sustainability," Sara notes. "Resource exploitation has adopted the rhetoric of sustainability, but yet it's just aiming to find more suitable ways to maintain patterns of expenditure."

Family Conflicts

Sara and her relatives have personally disagreed with the national administration over its tightening regulations on animal husbandry. A few years ago, Sara's brother undertook a sequence of finally failed legal cases over the required reduction of his animals, supposedly to stop vegetation depletion. As a show of solidarity, Sara created a extended set of creations called Pile O'Sápmi featuring a huge screen of 400 animal bones, which was exhibited at the the event Documenta 14 and later purchased by the public gallery, where it is displayed in the entryway.

Art as Advocacy

For many Sámi, creative work seems the exclusive realm in which they can be listened to by the global community. Two years ago, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|