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Attendees to Tate Modern are used to unusual encounters in its spacious Turbine Hall. They have basked under an man-made sun, glided down helter skelters, and witnessed robotic jellyfish hovering through the air. But this marks the initial time they will be immersing themselves in the complex nasal chambers of a reindeer. The current artistic project for this immense space—created by Indigenous Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—invites visitors into a winding design based on the expanded interior of a reindeer's nose cavities. Inside, they can meander around or unwind on reindeer hides, tuning in on headphones to Sámi elders telling narratives and knowledge.

Focus on the Nasal Passages

What's the focus on the nose? It could appear whimsical, but the installation celebrates a rarely recognized natural marvel: experts have uncovered that in under a second, the reindeer's nose can raise the temperature of the incoming air it takes in by 80 degrees celsius, enabling the animal to survive in inhospitable Arctic conditions. Scaling the nose to human-scale dimensions, Sara says, "creates a feeling of inferiority that you as a person are not dominant over nature." She is a former reporter, writer for kids, and rights advocate, who is from a reindeer-herding family in northern Norway. "Perhaps that creates the possibility to shift your perspective or evoke some modesty," she states.

An Homage to Indigenous Heritage

The labyrinthine structure is among various features in Sara's absorbing exhibition celebrating the traditions, understanding, and worldview of the Sámi, the sole native group in Europe. Semi-nomadic, the Sámi number roughly 100,000 people spread across northern Norway, the Finnish Arctic, the Swedish Lapland, and the Russian Arctic (an region they call Sápmi). They have faced discrimination, forced assimilation, and suppression of their dialect by all four countries. Through highlighting the reindeer, an creature at the center of the Sámi cosmology and creation story, the work also spotlights the community's challenges connected to the climate crisis, property rights, and colonialism.

Symbolism in Materials

On the lengthy entrance ramp, there's a soaring, eighty-five-foot structure of pelts entangled by electrical wires. It serves as a symbol for the political and economic systems limiting the Sámi. Like an electrical tower, part spiritual ascent, this section of the exhibit, named Goavve-, refers to the Sámi name for an severe climatic event, wherein thick layers of ice appear as changing conditions liquefy and ice over the snow, trapping the reindeers' primary cold-season food, lichen. Goavvi is a consequence of planetary warming, which is taking place up to at an accelerated rate in the Far North than in other regions.

Three years ago, I met with Sara in a remote town during a severe cold period and accompanied Sámi pastoralists on their motorized sleds in biting cold as they transported trailers of supplementary feed on to the barren tundra to distribute manually. The herd crowded round us, pawing the slippery ground in vain for mossy bits. This expensive and laborious process is having a severe effect on reindeer husbandry—and on the animals' natural survival. But the alternative is malnutrition. When such conditions become commonplace, reindeer are dying—a number from hunger, others suffocating after plunging into lakes and rivers through prematurely melting ice. To some extent, the installation is a memorial to them. "With the layering of elements, in a way I'm transporting the goavvi to London," says Sara.

Contrasting Belief Systems

The installation also emphasizes the sharp divergence between the industrial interpretation of electricity as a asset to be harnessed for profit and livelihood and the Sámi outlook of energy as an innate essence in creatures, individuals, and nature. Tate Modern's past as a industrial facility is tied up in this, as is what the Sámi see as environmental exploitation by Nordic countries. In their efforts to be exemplars for clean sources, these states have locked horns with the Sámi over the construction of windfarms, water power facilities, and digging operations on their ancestral land; the Sámi argue their human rights, ways of life, and traditions are at risk. "It's hard being such a small minority to stand your ground when the justifications are based on global sustainability," Sara notes. "Resource exploitation has co-opted the language of ecology, but yet it's just attempting to find more suitable ways to persist in practices of use."

Individual Conflicts

She and her relatives have personally disagreed with the state authorities over its increasingly stringent policies on herding. A few years ago, Sara's brother initiated a set of ultimately unsuccessful lawsuits over the mandatory slaughter of his herd, apparently to stop excessive feeding. In support, Sara created a four-year series of artworks named Pile O'Sápmi featuring a colossal curtain of four hundred reindeer skulls, which was shown at the 2017 art exhibition Documenta 14 and later obtained by the national institution, where it is displayed in the lobby.

Art as Awareness

For numerous Indigenous people, creative work appears the sole sphere in which they can be listened to by people of other nations. Two years ago, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|