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Attendees to Tate Modern are accustomed to unexpected encounters in its spacious Turbine Hall. They've sunbathed under an simulated sun, glided down amusement rides, and observed automated sea creatures floating through the air. But this marks the inaugural time they will be engaging themselves in the complex nasal passages of a reindeer. The current creative installation for this cavernous space—developed by Indigenous Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—welcomes visitors into a maze-like design based on the scaled-up interior of a reindeer's nasal passages. Once inside, they can stroll around or chill out on reindeer hides, tuning in on headphones to tribal seniors imparting narratives and wisdom.

Why the Nose?

Why the nose? It could appear whimsical, but the installation celebrates a rarely recognized scientific wonder: scientists have discovered that in less than one second, the reindeer's nose can raise the temperature of the incoming air it inhales by 80°C, helping the creature to survive in extreme Arctic conditions. Scaling the nose to larger than human size, Sara says, "creates a sense of inferiority that you as a individual are not in control over nature." She is a former writer, writer for kids, and environmental activist, who is from a pastoral family in northern Norway. "Possibly that creates the chance to change your perspective or trigger some modesty," she continues.

A Tribute to Sámi Culture

The maze-like design is one of several elements in Sara's immersive commission celebrating the culture, understanding, and beliefs of the Sámi, Europe's only Indigenous people. Traditionally mobile, the Sámi number about 100,000 people ranged across northern Norway, Finland, the Swedish Lapland, and the Kola region (an area they call Sápmi). They've faced oppression, integration policies, and suppression of their tongue by all four states. With an emphasis on the reindeer, an animal at the heart of the Sámi belief system and founding narrative, the work also spotlights the community's issues associated with the global warming, land dispossession, and imperialism.

Metaphor in Components

Along the extended entry incline, there's a looming, 26-meter structure of reindeer hides trapped by electrical wires. It can be read as a symbol for the societal frameworks limiting the Sámi. Like an electrical tower, part heavenly staircase, this component of the installation, titled Goavve-, refers to the Sámi name for an harsh environmental condition, whereby dense layers of ice form as fluctuating conditions melt and refreeze the snow, locking in the reindeers' primary winter food, moss. The condition is a result of climate change, which is taking place up to at an accelerated rate in the Far North than elsewhere.

Three years ago, I traveled to see Sara in a remote town during a severe cold period and accompanied Sámi pastoralists on their motorized sleds in chilly conditions as they hauled carts of animal nutrition on to the wind-scoured tundra to dispense manually. These animals gathered round us, pawing the icy ground in vain attempts for vegetative bits. This resource-intensive and laborious method is having a severe influence on animal rearing—and on the animals' independence. But the other option is death. As goavvi winters become frequent, reindeer are dying—a number from hunger, others drowning after sinking in lakes and rivers through thinning ice sheets. In a sense, the installation is a monument to them. "With the layering of components, in a way I'm transporting the phenomenon to London," says Sara.

Contrasting Perspectives

The sculpture also highlights the clear divergence between the modern interpretation of electricity as a resource to be utilized for economic benefit and livelihood and the Sámi outlook of life force as an inherent essence in animals, people, and the environment. The gallery's legacy as a coal and oil power station is linked with this, as is what the Sámi consider green colonialism by regional governments. In their efforts to be leaders for sustainable power, Scandinavian countries have disagreed with the Sámi over the development of turbine fields, water power facilities, and mines on their traditional territory; the Sámi assert their fundamental freedoms, incomes, and traditions are at risk. "It's hard being such a tiny group to stand your ground when the justifications are rooted in global sustainability," Sara observes. "Mining practices has adopted the language of environmentalism, but nonetheless it's just aiming to find alternative ways to persist in practices of use."

Family Struggles

The artist and her kin have themselves clashed with the Norwegian government over its tightening regulations on animal husbandry. Previously, Sara's sibling undertook a sequence of unsuccessful lawsuits over the required reduction of his herd, ostensibly to stop overgrazing. As a show of solidarity, Sara created a four-year collection of artworks called Pile O'Sápmi comprising a huge screen of 400 reindeer skulls, which was exhibited at the 2017 show Documenta 14 and later obtained by the national institution, where it resides in the entrance.

Art as Advocacy

Among the community, visual expression seems the exclusive domain in which they can be listened to by people of other nations. Recently, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|