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Attendees to Tate Modern are familiar to unexpected encounters in its spacious Turbine Hall. They've basked under an simulated sun, glided down amusement rides, and observed robotic jellyfish floating through the air. Yet this marks the initial time they will be venturing themselves in the intricate nasal passages of a reindeer. The latest creative installation for this huge space—created by Native Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—invites patrons into a labyrinthine design modeled after the scaled-up interior of a reindeer's nasal passages. Upon entering, they can wander around or unwind on skins, tuning in on earphones to tribal seniors imparting narratives and insights.

Focus on the Nasal Passages

Why choose the nasal structure? It could seem quirky, but the exhibit celebrates a obscure biological feat: scientists have found that in under a second, the reindeer's nose can heat the surrounding air it takes in by 80°C, helping the creature to endure in extreme Arctic temperatures. Scaling the nose to larger than human size, Sara notes, "generates a feeling of smallness that you as a human being are not superior over nature." The artist is a ex- writer, writer for kids, and rights advocate, who comes from a reindeer-herding family in the Norwegian Arctic. "Maybe that generates the possibility to shift your perspective or trigger some humility," she continues.

A Tribute to Traditional Ways

The labyrinthine installation is among various components in Sara's engaging commission celebrating the traditions, understanding, and beliefs of the Sámi, Europe's only Indigenous people. Traditionally mobile, the Sámi total approximately 100,000 people ranged across northern Norway, the Finnish Arctic, Sweden, and the Russian Arctic (an region they call Sápmi). They've endured oppression, cultural suppression, and repression of their dialect by all four states. Through highlighting the reindeer, an creature at the center of the Sámi belief system and founding narrative, the work also draws attention to the community's challenges connected to the climate crisis, land dispossession, and external control.

Meaning in Elements

Along the long access ramp, there's a towering, 26-metre sculpture of skins ensnared by power and light cables. It can be read as a metaphor for the societal frameworks limiting the Sámi. Part pylon, part celestial ladder, this section of the exhibit, titled Goavve-, refers to the Sámi word for an extreme weather phenomenon, wherein thick coatings of ice form as varying weather melt and refreeze the snow, trapping the reindeers' main cold-season nourishment, lichen. Goavvi is a outcome of climate change, which is taking place up to four times faster in the Far North than in other regions.

A few years back, I traveled to see Sara in the Norwegian far north during a severe cold period and accompanied Sámi reindeer keepers on their snowmobiles in freezing temperatures as they transported containers of food pellets on to the wind-scoured tundra to dispense manually. These animals gathered round us, digging the icy ground in futility for mossy bits. This costly and labour-intensive method is having a drastic influence on herding practices—and on the animals' independence. Yet the alternative is starvation. As these icy periods become frequent, reindeer are perishing—a number from lack of food, others submerging after sinking in water bodies through unstable frozen surfaces. To some extent, the installation is a monument to them. "By overlapping of elements, in a way I'm bringing the phenomenon to London," says Sara.

Contrasting Worldviews

The sculpture also highlights the stark divergence between the western view of energy as a commodity to be utilized for gain and survival and the Sámi philosophy of life force as an innate essence in creatures, people, and the environment. The gallery's legacy as a fossil fuel plant is connected to this, as is what the Sámi view as eco-imperialism by Scandinavian states. While attempting to be leaders for renewable energy, Nordic nations have clashed with the Sámi over the development of wind energy projects, hydroelectric dams, and mines on their ancestral land; the Sámi argue their legal protections, incomes, and traditions are at risk. "It's challenging being such a small minority to protect your rights when the reasons are grounded in global sustainability," Sara notes. "Mining practices has adopted the language of sustainability, but still it's just attempting to find more suitable ways to maintain habits of use."

Individual Struggles

She and her family have themselves clashed with the state authorities over its ever-stricter policies on reindeer management. In 2016, Sara's brother initiated a set of finally failed legal cases over the forced culling of his herd, supposedly to stop overgrazing. As a show of solidarity, Sara created a extended series of creations named Pile O'Sápmi featuring a colossal drape of four hundred cranial remains, which was displayed at the the art exhibition Documenta 14 and later acquired by the National Museum of Oslo, where it resides in the entrance.

Creative Expression as Advocacy

For many Sámi, art appears the exclusive realm in which they can be listened to by outsiders. Recently, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|