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Guests to Tate Modern are accustomed to unexpected displays in its spacious Turbine Hall. They have relaxed under an simulated sun, glided down helter skelters, and witnessed automated jellyfish floating through the air. Yet this marks the inaugural time they will be engaging themselves in the intricate nasal chambers of a reindeer. The newest artist commission for this immense space—developed by Native Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—invites visitors into a winding construction modeled after the enlarged interior of a reindeer's nasal passages. Upon entering, they can stroll around or unwind on skins, listening on earphones to community leaders sharing tales and knowledge.

Focus on the Nasal Passages

Why the nose? It could sound quirky, but the exhibit honors a rarely recognized natural marvel: experts have discovered that in less than one second, the reindeer's nose can heat the surrounding air it breathes in by 80 degrees celsius, enabling the animal to thrive in inhospitable Arctic climates. Enlarging the nose to bigger than a person, Sara notes, "produces a perception of insignificance that you as a person are not in control over nature." The artist is a former reporter, young adult author, and land defender, who comes from a herding family in the Norwegian Arctic. "Maybe that generates the possibility to alter your perspective or evoke some modesty," she adds.

A Celebration to Sámi Culture

The labyrinthine installation is one of several components in Sara's immersive exhibition honoring the traditions, understanding, and beliefs of the Sámi, the continent's original inhabitants. Partially migratory, the Sámi total roughly 100,000 people spread across the Norwegian north, the Finnish Arctic, the Swedish Lapland, and the Russian Arctic (an region they call Sápmi). They've faced persecution, forced assimilation, and repression of their language by all four states. With an emphasis on the reindeer, an animal at the center of the Sámi belief system and founding narrative, the installation also highlights the group's issues associated with the global warming, loss of territory, and colonialism.

Symbolism in Components

Along the lengthy entrance slope, there's a soaring, 26-meter sculpture of pelts trapped by electrical wires. It serves as a metaphor for the societal frameworks restricting the Sámi. Like an electrical tower, part heavenly staircase, this section of the installation, titled Goavve-, refers to the Sámi term for an harsh environmental condition, in which thick layers of ice develop as varying temperatures thaw and ice over the snow, trapping the reindeers' key cold-season food, fungus. The condition is a result of global heating, which is happening up to at an accelerated rate in the Polar region than globally.

Three years ago, I met with Sara in the Norwegian far north during a goavvi winter and accompanied Sámi pastoralists on their Arctic vehicles in freezing temperatures as they transported trailers of animal nutrition on to the wind-scoured tundra to provide manually. The herd surrounded round us, scratching the icy ground in futility for mossy bits. This expensive and labour-intensive procedure is having a severe influence on herding practices—and on the animals' independence. However the choice is death. When such conditions become frequent, reindeer are dying—some from hunger, others suffocating after sinking in lakes and rivers through prematurely melting ice. In a sense, the work is a tribute to them. "With the layering of components, in a way I'm transporting the phenomenon to London," says Sara.

Diverging Perspectives

The sculpture also highlights the clear difference between the modern interpretation of electricity as a commodity to be harnessed for profit and existence and the Sámi philosophy of life force as an natural power in animals, individuals, and nature. The gallery's past as a fossil fuel plant is connected to this, as is what the Sámi view as green colonialism by Nordic countries. While attempting to be leaders for renewable energy, Scandinavian countries have clashed with the Sámi over the development of windfarms, water power facilities, and extraction sites on their ancestral land; the Sámi contend their legal protections, livelihoods, and way of life are threatened. "It's hard being such a tiny group to stand your ground when the reasons are rooted in global sustainability," Sara observes. "Resource exploitation has appropriated the discourse of ecology, but still it's just striving to find better ways to maintain practices of use."

Personal Conflicts

Sara and her family have themselves conflicted with the national administration over its increasingly stringent policies on reindeer management. In 2016, Sara's sibling initiated a set of unsuccessful lawsuits over the mandatory slaughter of his livestock, supposedly to stop excessive feeding. As a show of solidarity, Sara produced a extended set of pieces titled Pile O'Sápmi featuring a huge curtain of four hundred animal bones, which was shown at the 2017's art exhibition Documenta 14 and later obtained by the national institution, where it resides in the lobby.

Creative Expression as Activism

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