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Attendees to Tate Modern are used to unexpected experiences in its expansive Turbine Hall. They have basked under an man-made sun, descended down helter skelters, and witnessed automated sea creatures floating through the air. Yet this marks the initial time they will be immersing themselves in the detailed nose chambers of a reindeer. The current artistic project for this cavernous space—created by Indigenous Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—encourages visitors into a labyrinthine construction modeled after the scaled-up inside of a reindeer's nasal airways. Upon entering, they can wander around or unwind on reindeer hides, tuning in on earphones to community leaders telling tales and wisdom.

The Significance of the Nose

What's the focus on the nose? It might seem quirky, but the installation honors a rarely recognized natural marvel: scientists have discovered that in under a second, the reindeer's nose can heat the surrounding air it inhales by eighty degrees, enabling the creature to thrive in harsh Arctic climates. Enlarging the nose to larger than human size, Sara notes, "generates a perception of inferiority that you as a human being are not superior over nature." The artist is a ex- writer, children's author, and environmental activist, who comes from a pastoral family in northern Norway. "Maybe that generates the possibility to alter your perspective or evoke some modesty," she adds.

A Tribute to Indigenous Heritage

The winding structure is among various elements in Sara's engaging exhibition celebrating the heritage, knowledge, and beliefs of the Sámi, the continent's original inhabitants. Partially migratory, the Sámi count approximately 100,000 people spread across the Norwegian north, Finland, Sweden, and the Russian Arctic (an territory they call Sápmi). They've experienced persecution, forced assimilation, and suppression of their tongue by all four nations. By focusing on the reindeer, an animal at the core of the Sámi belief system and creation story, the installation also highlights the group's issues connected to the environmental emergency, loss of territory, and imperialism.

Symbolism in Elements

At the lengthy access ramp, there's a soaring, eighty-five-foot formation of reindeer hides entangled by power and light cables. It can be read as a symbol for the governance and financial structures restricting the Sámi. Part pylon, part spiritual ascent, this section of the artwork, titled Goavve-, relates to the Sámi term for an harsh environmental condition, wherein thick layers of ice develop as varying weather melt and solidify again the snow, locking in the reindeers' main cold-season sustenance, moss. Goavvi is a result of planetary warming, which is occurring up to four times faster in the Far North than globally.

Three years ago, I traveled to see Sara in the Norwegian far north during a icy season and accompanied Sámi reindeer keepers on their motorized sleds in freezing temperatures as they hauled carts of food pellets on to the barren frozen landscape to provide through labor. These animals surrounded round us, pawing the icy ground in futility for lichen-covered bits. This expensive and labour-intensive process is having a drastic impact on reindeer husbandry—and on the animals' independence. But the alternative is death. As goavvi winters become frequent, reindeer are perishing—a number from hunger, others drowning after sinking in water bodies through thinning ice sheets. In a sense, the work is a tribute to them. "Through the stacking of materials, in a way I'm bringing the condition to London," says Sara.

Diverging Belief Systems

The sculpture also emphasizes the clear divergence between the western understanding of power as a asset to be utilized for economic benefit and livelihood and the Sámi worldview of vitality as an innate power in animals, humans, and the environment. This venue's legacy as a fossil fuel plant is linked with this, as is what the Sámi see as green colonialism by Scandinavian states. In their efforts to be leaders for renewable energy, Scandinavian countries have locked horns with the Sámi over the development of wind energy projects, hydroelectric dams, and extraction sites on their ancestral land; the Sámi assert their legal protections, incomes, and culture are at risk. "It's hard being such a small minority to protect your rights when the reasons are based on environmental protection," Sara notes. "Resource exploitation has co-opted the language of sustainability, but nonetheless it's just aiming to find better ways to continue habits of consumption."

Individual Conflicts

She and her relatives have personally clashed with the state authorities over its ever-stricter rules on reindeer management. Previously, Sara's sibling undertook a series of unsuccessful legal cases over the mandatory slaughter of his livestock, supposedly to stop overgrazing. To back him, Sara developed a multi-year collection of creations called Pile O'Sápmi comprising a massive curtain of four hundred cranial remains, which was shown at the 2017's event Documenta 14 and later obtained by the national institution, where it resides in the entrance.

Creative Expression as Advocacy

Among the community, art seems the only realm in which they can be heard by the global community. Recently, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|