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Guests to Tate Modern are used to unexpected experiences in its vast Turbine Hall. They've sunbathed under an artificial sun, descended down spiral slides, and seen AI-powered jellyfish drifting through the air. But this marks the initial time they will be engaging themselves in the intricate nasal passages of a reindeer. The current artist commission for this cavernous space—created by Indigenous Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—encourages gallerygoers into a labyrinthine design inspired by the expanded inside of a reindeer's nasal airways. Once inside, they can wander around or unwind on reindeer hides, tuning in on earphones to Sámi elders sharing stories and insights.

The Significance of the Nose

Why choose the nasal structure? It could seem playful, but the installation honors a rarely recognized biological feat: scientists have uncovered that in less than one second, the reindeer's nose can heat the surrounding air it inhales by 80 degrees celsius, enabling the creature to thrive in inhospitable Arctic temperatures. Scaling the nose to larger than human size, Sara explains, "produces a sense of insignificance that you as a person are not dominant over nature." She is a former journalist, children's author, and environmental activist, who is from a reindeer-herding family in the far north of Norway. "Maybe that creates the potential to change your outlook or evoke some humility," she adds.

An Homage to Indigenous Heritage

The winding design is among various features in Sara's engaging art project showcasing the traditions, understanding, and beliefs of the Sámi, the sole native group in Europe. Partially migratory, the Sámi number approximately 100,000 people ranged across the Norwegian north, the Finnish Arctic, the Swedish Lapland, and Russia's Kola Peninsula (an area they call Sápmi). They have experienced oppression, forced assimilation, and repression of their dialect by all four nations. By focusing on the reindeer, an creature at the center of the Sámi mythology and creation story, the installation also highlights the people's struggles associated with the climate crisis, property rights, and colonialism.

Metaphor in Elements

Along the lengthy entrance slope, there's a towering, 26-metre sculpture of skins ensnared by power and light cables. It represents a symbol for the political and economic systems constraining the Sámi. Like an electrical tower, part spiritual ascent, this section of the artwork, named Goavve-, refers to the Sámi word for an extreme weather phenomenon, in which solid sheets of ice develop as varying temperatures liquefy and solidify again the snow, trapping the reindeers' key winter sustenance, fungus. The condition is a result of global heating, which is taking place up to at an accelerated rate in the Polar region than in other regions.

A few years back, I traveled to see Sara in a remote town during a severe cold period and went with Sámi reindeer keepers on their Arctic vehicles in freezing temperatures as they transported trailers of animal nutrition on to the exposed frozen landscape to provide manually. The herd surrounded round us, scratching the frozen ground in futility for lichen-covered bits. This expensive and labour-intensive process is having a significant effect on herding practices—and on the animals' independence. But the choice is starvation. As these icy periods become frequent, reindeer are perishing—a number from starvation, others drowning after sinking in streams through thinning ice sheets. To some extent, the installation is a monument to them. "With the layering of components, in a way I'm introducing the condition to London," says Sara.

Contrasting Worldviews

The sculpture also emphasizes the sharp difference between the modern interpretation of electricity as a asset to be utilized for gain and survival and the Sámi outlook of vitality as an natural life force in creatures, people, and the environment. Tate Modern's past as a fossil fuel plant is tied up in this, as is what the Sámi view as eco-imperialism by regional governments. As they strive to be exemplars for sustainable power, Scandinavian countries have disagreed with the Sámi over the construction of turbine fields, water power facilities, and extraction sites on their native soil; the Sámi argue their legal protections, ways of life, and way of life are endangered. "It's very difficult being such a limited population to stand your ground when the justifications are grounded in environmental protection," Sara observes. "Mining practices has appropriated the rhetoric of environmentalism, but nonetheless it's just aiming to find alternative ways to persist in habits of use."

Individual Struggles

The artist and her family have personally clashed with the national administration over its ever-stricter rules on herding. In 2016, Sara's brother initiated a series of ultimately unsuccessful lawsuits over the forced culling of his animals, apparently to stop vegetation depletion. To back him, Sara produced a four-year set of pieces titled Pile O'Sápmi comprising a colossal curtain of 400 animal bones, which was displayed at the the show Documenta 14 and later purchased by the National Museum of Oslo, where it is displayed in the lobby.

Art as Activism

For many Sámi, visual expression appears the exclusive domain in which they can be listened to by outsiders. Two years ago, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|