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Visitors to Tate Modern are accustomed to unexpected encounters in its spacious Turbine Hall. They've sunbathed under an artificial sun, slid down spiral slides, and witnessed robotic sea creatures hovering through the air. But this marks the initial time they will be immersing themselves in the intricate nasal chambers of a reindeer. The newest creative installation for this cavernous space—developed by Native Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—welcomes visitors into a labyrinthine structure based on the expanded inside of a reindeer's nose airways. Inside, they can stroll around or chill out on reindeer hides, listening on earphones to Sámi elders telling stories and insights.

Why the Nose?

Why the nose? It might seem quirky, but the artwork pays tribute to a obscure natural marvel: scientists have uncovered that in a fraction of a second, the reindeer's nose can raise the temperature of the ambient air it inhales by eighty degrees, allowing the animal to endure in inhospitable Arctic temperatures. Scaling the nose to larger than human size, Sara notes, "produces a perception of smallness that you as a individual are not in control over nature." She is a former writer, writer for kids, and land defender, who is from a herding family in the Norwegian Arctic. "Possibly that generates the potential to alter your perspective or trigger some humility," she states.

An Homage to Indigenous Heritage

The winding structure is among various elements in Sara's absorbing art project celebrating the traditions, understanding, and beliefs of the Sámi, the continent's original inhabitants. Traditionally mobile, the Sámi count approximately 100,000 people spread across northern Norway, Finland, the Swedish Lapland, and the Russian Arctic (an region they call Sápmi). They have endured discrimination, integration policies, and suppression of their language by all four countries. Through highlighting the reindeer, an creature at the heart of the Sámi mythology and origin tale, the work also draws attention to the group's challenges associated with the environmental emergency, loss of territory, and colonialism.

Metaphor in Materials

At the lengthy entry incline, there's a towering, 26-meter formation of pelts entangled by power and light cables. It can be read as a analogy for the political and economic systems restricting the Sámi. Like an electrical tower, part spiritual ascent, this part of the installation, titled Goavve-, refers to the Sámi name for an severe climatic event, in which solid layers of ice form as fluctuating temperatures melt and solidify again the snow, locking in the reindeers' main winter nourishment, moss. This phenomenon is a result of climate change, which is happening up to much more rapidly in the Polar region than globally.

Previously, I traveled to see Sara in a remote town during a goavvi winter and accompanied Sámi pastoralists on their motorized sleds in chilly conditions as they hauled carts of animal nutrition on to the exposed Arctic plains to dispense through labor. The reindeer crowded round us, scratching the frozen ground in vain attempts for lichen-covered pieces. This expensive and demanding process is having a severe effect on reindeer husbandry—and on the animals' natural survival. But the alternative is malnutrition. When such conditions become routine, reindeer are dying—some from starvation, others submerging after sinking in water bodies through prematurely melting ice. In a sense, the installation is a tribute to them. "With the layering of elements, in a way I'm introducing the goavvi to London," says Sara.

Opposing Perspectives

The installation also highlights the sharp divergence between the industrial view of energy as a asset to be utilized for gain and survival and the Sámi worldview of vitality as an natural life force in animals, individuals, and land. The gallery's past as a industrial facility is tied up in this, as is what the Sámi see as eco-imperialism by regional governments. While attempting to be leaders for sustainable power, these states have locked horns with the Sámi over the development of wind energy projects, hydroelectric dams, and extraction sites on their traditional territory; the Sámi contend their legal protections, incomes, and traditions are threatened. "It's very difficult being such a tiny group to defend yourself when the arguments are based on environmental protection," Sara comments. "Mining practices has adopted the language of ecology, but still it's just striving to find alternative ways to continue habits of expenditure."

Individual Challenges

The artist and her family have personally disagreed with the state authorities over its tightening rules on reindeer management. A few years ago, Sara's brother embarked on a sequence of unsuccessful lawsuits over the forced culling of his herd, apparently to stop overgrazing. In support, Sara developed a multi-year series of creations called Pile O'Sápmi comprising a massive screen of four hundred animal bones, which was displayed at the 2017's event Documenta 14 and later purchased by the national institution, where it hangs in the entrance.

The Role of Art in Awareness

For numerous Indigenous people, creative work is the only realm in which they can be heard by people of other nations. Recently, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|