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Guests to Tate Modern are familiar to surprising displays in its vast Turbine Hall. They've sunbathed under an simulated sun, slid down amusement rides, and seen robotic jellyfish drifting through the air. However this marks the inaugural time they will be immersing themselves in the detailed nasal chambers of a reindeer. The latest artist commission for this cavernous space—developed by Indigenous Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—encourages gallerygoers into a labyrinthine structure modeled after the scaled-up interior of a reindeer's nasal cavities. Once inside, they can wander around or unwind on reindeer hides, tuning in on headphones to Sámi elders sharing narratives and insights.

The Significance of the Nose

Why the nose? It may appear playful, but the exhibit celebrates a little-known biological feat: experts have found that in a fraction of a second, the reindeer's nose can warm the incoming air it inhales by eighty degrees, enabling the animal to endure in extreme Arctic temperatures. Scaling the nose to human-scale dimensions, Sara explains, "produces a sense of insignificance that you as a individual are not superior over nature." The artist is a ex- journalist, writer for kids, and environmental activist, who is from a reindeer-herding family in the Norwegian Arctic. "Possibly that fosters the potential to shift your viewpoint or trigger some humility," she continues.

A Celebration to Indigenous Heritage

The maze-like structure is part of a elements in Sara's engaging exhibition celebrating the traditions, knowledge, and beliefs of the Sámi, Europe's only Indigenous people. Partially migratory, the Sámi total approximately 100,000 people spread across the Norwegian north, the Finnish Arctic, Sweden, and Russia's Kola Peninsula (an region they call Sápmi). They have endured oppression, integration policies, and repression of their dialect by all four countries. By focusing on the reindeer, an creature at the center of the Sámi cosmology and creation story, the work also draws attention to the group's struggles connected to the environmental emergency, loss of territory, and imperialism.

Meaning in Components

At the lengthy access ramp, there's a towering, 26-metre structure of reindeer hides trapped by utility lines. It can be read as a metaphor for the societal frameworks limiting the Sámi. Partly a utility pole, part celestial ladder, this component of the installation, named Goavve-, relates to the Sámi word for an harsh environmental condition, whereby dense coatings of ice develop as changing weather liquefy and solidify again the snow, locking in the reindeers' main cold-season food, moss. The condition is a outcome of planetary warming, which is taking place up to at an accelerated rate in the Far North than globally.

A few years back, I met with Sara in Guovdageaidnu during a goavvi winter and went with Sámi herders on their snowmobiles in freezing temperatures as they carried trailers of supplementary feed on to the exposed tundra to provide through labor. The reindeer crowded round us, pawing the frozen ground in vain attempts for vegetative morsels. This costly and demanding method is having a significant influence on reindeer husbandry—and on the animals' natural survival. But the other option is starvation. As these icy periods become routine, reindeer are perishing—a number from hunger, others submerging after sinking in lakes and rivers through prematurely melting ice. On one level, the installation is a monument to them. "With the layering of components, in a way I'm bringing the condition to London," says Sara.

Contrasting Belief Systems

This artwork also underscores the clear divergence between the industrial view of energy as a resource to be harnessed for economic benefit and livelihood and the Sámi worldview of life force as an inherent essence in creatures, individuals, and nature. The gallery's legacy as a industrial facility is tied up in this, as is what the Sámi view as green colonialism by regional governments. As they strive to be leaders for sustainable power, these states have disagreed with the Sámi over the building of wind energy projects, water power facilities, and mines on their traditional territory; the Sámi contend their fundamental freedoms, ways of life, and culture are threatened. "It's very difficult being such a small minority to stand your ground when the reasons are grounded in environmental protection," Sara notes. "Extractivism has adopted the rhetoric of sustainability, but yet it's just aiming to find better ways to continue practices of expenditure."

Family Challenges

She and her relatives have personally conflicted with the national administration over its increasingly stringent rules on reindeer management. Previously, Sara's sibling initiated a series of finally failed lawsuits over the required reduction of his herd, supposedly to stop overgrazing. In support, Sara produced a four-year series of artworks titled Pile O'Sápmi including a huge drape of 400 animal bones, which was shown at the the event Documenta 14 and later purchased by the public gallery, where it hangs in the lobby.

Art as Awareness

For many Sámi, art seems the sole realm in which they can be understood by outsiders. Recently, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|