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Guests to Tate Modern are used to unusual experiences in its expansive Turbine Hall. They have basked under an artificial sun, descended down amusement rides, and witnessed automated sea creatures hovering through the air. However this marks the initial time they will be engaging themselves in the intricate nose passages of a reindeer. The current creative installation for this cavernous space—created by Native Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—invites patrons into a labyrinthine design based on the expanded interior of a reindeer's nasal cavities. Upon entering, they can stroll around or relax on reindeer hides, listening on earphones to tribal seniors imparting stories and insights.

The Significance of the Nose

Why the nose? It might seem whimsical, but the exhibit celebrates a obscure biological feat: experts have uncovered that in under a second, the reindeer's nose can heat the incoming air it breathes in by 80 degrees celsius, helping the animal to endure in extreme Arctic climates. Enlarging the nose to bigger than a person, Sara explains, "generates a perception of smallness that you as a human being are not dominant over nature." Sara is a ex- reporter, children's author, and environmental activist, who comes from a herding family in the Norwegian Arctic. "Perhaps that generates the potential to alter your viewpoint or evoke some humility," she continues.

A Celebration to Sámi Culture

The maze-like structure is among various components in Sara's engaging commission showcasing the culture, knowledge, and worldview of the Sámi, Europe's only Indigenous people. Traditionally mobile, the Sámi count approximately 100,000 people ranged across the Norwegian north, Finland, the Swedish Lapland, and Russia's Kola Peninsula (an region they call Sápmi). They have endured discrimination, forced assimilation, and repression of their language by all four countries. Through highlighting the reindeer, an creature at the heart of the Sámi mythology and creation story, the art also draws attention to the community's struggles associated with the global warming, property rights, and colonialism.

Meaning in Components

Along the long entry slope, there's a looming, 26-metre formation of skins trapped by electrical wires. It represents a analogy for the societal frameworks limiting the Sámi. Part pylon, part heavenly staircase, this section of the installation, named Goavve-, refers to the Sámi name for an severe climatic event, wherein dense coatings of ice develop as changing conditions melt and solidify again the snow, encasing the reindeers' main winter sustenance, fungus. Goavvi is a result of planetary warming, which is taking place up to four times faster in the Polar region than elsewhere.

Previously, I visited Sara in Guovdageaidnu during a goavvi winter and joined Sámi reindeer keepers on their motorized sleds in chilly conditions as they carried carts of food pellets on to the barren Arctic plains to dispense manually. The herd crowded round us, digging the slippery ground in vain for mossy morsels. This expensive and labour-intensive method is having a drastic effect on herding practices—and on the animals' independence. But the other option is starvation. As goavvi winters become frequent, reindeer are dying—a number from hunger, others drowning after falling into streams through unstable frozen surfaces. To some extent, the art is a monument to them. "By overlapping of materials, in a way I'm bringing the phenomenon to London," says Sara.

Opposing Worldviews

The sculpture also underscores the sharp divergence between the western view of energy as a resource to be exploited for gain and existence and the Sámi philosophy of energy as an natural life force in animals, people, and nature. The gallery's history as a industrial facility is tied up in this, as is what the Sámi view as eco-imperialism by regional governments. As they strive to be standard bearers for clean sources, Nordic nations have locked horns with the Sámi over the building of windfarms, river barriers, and mines on their traditional territory; the Sámi contend their legal protections, livelihoods, and traditions are endangered. "It's challenging being such a limited population to stand your ground when the reasons are rooted in environmental protection," Sara comments. "Extractivism has co-opted the language of ecology, but nonetheless it's just striving to find more suitable ways to continue patterns of consumption."

Personal Challenges

The artist and her relatives have themselves conflicted with the state authorities over its tightening policies on reindeer management. Previously, Sara's sibling embarked on a series of unsuccessful court actions over the forced culling of his herd, ostensibly to stop vegetation depletion. As a show of solidarity, Sara produced a multi-year collection of pieces named Pile O'Sápmi featuring a massive screen of 400 reindeer skulls, which was displayed at the 2017 art exhibition Documenta 14 and later obtained by the National Museum of Oslo, where it resides in the entrance.

The Role of Art in Activism

For many Sámi, creative work seems the exclusive domain in which they can be listened to by people of other nations. Two years ago, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|