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Attendees to Tate Modern are accustomed to unusual encounters in its spacious Turbine Hall. They've basked under an man-made sun, slid down amusement rides, and observed AI-powered jellyfish hovering through the air. Yet this marks the first time they will be immersing themselves in the detailed nose chambers of a reindeer. The newest creative installation for this immense space—created by Indigenous Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—invites patrons into a maze-like structure based on the scaled-up inside of a reindeer's nasal cavities. Upon entering, they can wander around or relax on pelts, tuning in on headphones to tribal seniors imparting narratives and insights.

Why the Nose?

What's the focus on the nose? It could appear playful, but the installation celebrates a obscure biological feat: scientists have discovered that in under a second, the reindeer's nose can raise the temperature of the incoming air it takes in by 80 degrees celsius, allowing the creature to endure in inhospitable Arctic conditions. Expanding the nose to larger than human size, Sara explains, "generates a feeling of insignificance that you as a person are not superior over nature." She is a former journalist, writer for kids, and environmental activist, who hails from a reindeer-herding family in northern Norway. "Maybe that generates the chance to alter your outlook or trigger some humility," she adds.

A Tribute to Traditional Ways

The maze-like design is among various elements in Sara's immersive art project honoring the heritage, understanding, and philosophy of the Sámi, Europe's only Indigenous people. Semi-nomadic, the Sámi count roughly 100,000 people ranged across northern Norway, the Finnish Arctic, the Swedish Lapland, and the Kola region (an area they call Sápmi). They've experienced discrimination, cultural suppression, and eradication of their dialect by all four nations. By focusing on the reindeer, an animal at the core of the Sámi mythology and founding narrative, the work also spotlights the community's struggles relating to the global warming, loss of territory, and external control.

Symbolism in Materials

Along the extended entrance ramp, there's a looming, 26-meter sculpture of skins ensnared by electrical wires. It serves as a analogy for the societal frameworks restricting the Sámi. Part pylon, part heavenly staircase, this component of the exhibit, named Goavve-, points to the Sámi word for an severe climatic event, whereby dense coatings of ice develop as varying temperatures thaw and ice over the snow, encasing the reindeers' main cold-season food, fungus. Goavvi is a result of climate change, which is happening up to at an accelerated rate in the Polar region than elsewhere.

A few years back, I met with Sara in a remote town during a goavvi winter and went with Sámi pastoralists on their snowmobiles in biting cold as they transported trailers of supplementary feed on to the wind-scoured frozen landscape to dispense through labor. The herd surrounded round us, scratching the slippery ground in vain attempts for lichen-covered morsels. This costly and demanding process is having a significant influence on animal rearing—and on the animals' natural survival. However the alternative is death. When such conditions become commonplace, reindeer are succumbing—a number from hunger, others drowning after sinking in streams through unstable frozen surfaces. On one level, the installation is a tribute to them. "With the layering of components, in a way I'm bringing the condition to London," says Sara.

Opposing Worldviews

The sculpture also highlights the stark divergence between the western view of electricity as a asset to be exploited for economic benefit and existence and the Sámi philosophy of energy as an natural power in animals, people, and nature. This venue's legacy as a coal and oil power station is linked with this, as is what the Sámi see as environmental exploitation by Scandinavian states. In their efforts to be exemplars for renewable energy, Nordic nations have locked horns with the Sámi over the building of windfarms, river barriers, and extraction sites on their traditional territory; the Sámi argue their legal protections, ways of life, and traditions are at risk. "It's very difficult being such a limited population to protect your rights when the reasons are grounded in global sustainability," Sara comments. "Resource exploitation has adopted the discourse of sustainability, but nonetheless it's just aiming to find better ways to maintain practices of expenditure."

Personal Struggles

Sara and her relatives have personally conflicted with the Norwegian government over its increasingly stringent policies on reindeer management. Previously, Sara's brother initiated a sequence of finally failed legal cases over the mandatory slaughter of his livestock, supposedly to stop vegetation depletion. As a show of solidarity, Sara produced a multi-year set of pieces called Pile O'Sápmi comprising a huge drape of four hundred cranial remains, which was displayed at the 2017's show Documenta 14 and later purchased by the national institution, where it resides in the entrance.

Creative Expression as Activism

For numerous Indigenous people, visual expression seems the only domain in which they can be heard by people of other nations. Two years ago, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|