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Attendees to Tate Modern are familiar to surprising experiences in its vast Turbine Hall. They've basked under an simulated sun, glided down amusement rides, and seen automated sea creatures hovering through the air. However this marks the inaugural time they will be immersing themselves in the intricate nasal passages of a reindeer. The current artistic project for this cavernous space—created by Native Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—encourages patrons into a winding structure based on the scaled-up inside of a reindeer's nasal passages. Once inside, they can stroll around or relax on pelts, listening on earphones to community leaders imparting stories and wisdom.

Why the Nose?

What's the focus on the nose? It could seem whimsical, but the exhibit honors a obscure natural marvel: scientists have discovered that in a fraction of a second, the reindeer's nose can warm the ambient air it breathes in by eighty degrees, helping the creature to endure in extreme Arctic temperatures. Enlarging the nose to larger than human size, Sara notes, "produces a feeling of smallness that you as a individual are not in control over nature." Sara is a former writer, children's author, and land defender, who hails from a reindeer-herding family in the far north of Norway. "Perhaps that fosters the potential to shift your viewpoint or trigger some humbleness," she adds.

A Celebration to Sámi Culture

The labyrinthine design is one of several features in Sara's immersive exhibition honoring the traditions, science, and philosophy of the Sámi, the continent's original inhabitants. Semi-nomadic, the Sámi total about 100,000 people distributed across the Norwegian north, the Finnish Arctic, the Swedish Lapland, and the Russian Arctic (an territory they call Sápmi). They've endured oppression, integration policies, and repression of their tongue by all four countries. Through highlighting the reindeer, an creature at the center of the Sámi belief system and origin tale, the installation also draws attention to the community's challenges associated with the climate crisis, loss of territory, and imperialism.

Meaning in Materials

At the long access ramp, there's a looming, 26-meter formation of pelts ensnared by utility lines. It represents a metaphor for the societal frameworks restricting the Sámi. Partly a utility pole, part spiritual ascent, this part of the artwork, titled Goavve-, relates to the Sámi term for an harsh environmental condition, wherein solid sheets of ice appear as varying weather liquefy and refreeze the snow, encasing the reindeers' primary winter sustenance, moss. Goavvi is a consequence of climate change, which is occurring up to at an accelerated rate in the Far North than elsewhere.

Three years ago, I traveled to see Sara in Guovdageaidnu during a icy season and went with Sámi herders on their snowmobiles in chilly conditions as they carried trailers of animal nutrition on to the exposed frozen landscape to dispense through labor. These animals gathered round us, digging the slippery ground in vain attempts for vegetative morsels. This expensive and demanding process is having a drastic influence on herding practices—and on the animals' natural survival. Yet the other option is malnutrition. As these icy periods become routine, reindeer are dying—a number from starvation, others submerging after plunging into streams through thinning ice sheets. In a sense, the work is a tribute to them. "Through the stacking of elements, in a way I'm bringing the phenomenon to London," says Sara.

Opposing Worldviews

The sculpture also emphasizes the sharp contrast between the western understanding of power as a asset to be utilized for economic benefit and existence and the Sámi philosophy of life force as an natural essence in creatures, individuals, and nature. Tate Modern's past as a industrial facility is linked with this, as is what the Sámi view as eco-imperialism by Nordic countries. While attempting to be exemplars for clean sources, these states have locked horns with the Sámi over the building of windfarms, hydroelectric dams, and extraction sites on their native soil; the Sámi assert their fundamental freedoms, livelihoods, and traditions are threatened. "It's challenging being such a small minority to defend yourself when the justifications are based on environmental protection," Sara comments. "Mining practices has adopted the language of sustainability, but still it's just attempting to find better ways to continue practices of use."

Individual Challenges

Sara and her family have personally clashed with the Norwegian government over its increasingly stringent regulations on reindeer management. In 2016, Sara's brother embarked on a set of finally failed court actions over the forced culling of his animals, supposedly to stop vegetation depletion. To back him, Sara created a multi-year set of artworks titled Pile O'Sápmi comprising a colossal drape of numerous animal bones, which was exhibited at the the art exhibition Documenta 14 and later acquired by the national institution, where it resides in the entryway.

The Role of Art in Awareness

For numerous Indigenous people, creative work is the sole domain in which they can be listened to by outsiders. Recently, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|