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Attendees to Tate Modern are used to unusual experiences in its spacious Turbine Hall. They've basked under an simulated sun, descended down helter skelters, and witnessed robotic jellyfish hovering through the air. However this marks the first time they will be venturing themselves in the complex nose passages of a reindeer. The latest creative installation for this huge space—developed by Native Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—encourages visitors into a winding construction modeled after the enlarged inside of a reindeer's nose airways. Upon entering, they can wander around or chill out on reindeer hides, listening on earphones to Sámi elders imparting tales and insights.

Why the Nose?

What's the focus on the nose? It may seem whimsical, but the exhibit honors a rarely recognized natural marvel: scientists have found that in a fraction of a second, the reindeer's nose can heat the incoming air it breathes in by 80°C, helping the creature to thrive in extreme Arctic conditions. Enlarging the nose to larger than human size, Sara notes, "creates a perception of insignificance that you as a person are not superior over nature." She is a ex- reporter, writer for kids, and rights advocate, who hails from a reindeer-herding family in northern Norway. "Possibly that creates the possibility to change your outlook or trigger some humbleness," she continues.

A Celebration to Traditional Ways

The maze-like structure is one of several features in Sara's engaging exhibition showcasing the culture, understanding, and worldview of the Sámi, the sole native group in Europe. Partially migratory, the Sámi number approximately 100,000 people distributed across the Norwegian north, Finland, Sweden, and the Russian Arctic (an territory they call Sápmi). They have experienced oppression, integration policies, and repression of their language by all four countries. By focusing on the reindeer, an creature at the center of the Sámi cosmology and origin tale, the work also spotlights the community's challenges relating to the environmental emergency, property rights, and colonialism.

Meaning in Materials

At the lengthy entrance incline, there's a soaring, eighty-five-foot sculpture of pelts ensnared by electrical wires. It can be read as a metaphor for the societal frameworks limiting the Sámi. Like an electrical tower, part celestial ladder, this section of the installation, titled Goavve-, points to the Sámi word for an extreme weather phenomenon, wherein thick coatings of ice develop as changing conditions thaw and ice over the snow, locking in the reindeers' main winter food, lichen. The condition is a consequence of climate change, which is taking place up to four times faster in the Polar region than in other regions.

Three years ago, I visited Sara in a remote town during a goavvi winter and joined Sámi reindeer keepers on their Arctic vehicles in freezing temperatures as they hauled carts of supplementary feed on to the exposed Arctic plains to distribute by hand. The reindeer surrounded round us, scratching the frozen ground in futility for lichen-covered bits. This expensive and demanding method is having a significant impact on reindeer husbandry—and on the animals' natural survival. However the alternative is malnutrition. When such conditions become commonplace, reindeer are succumbing—some from starvation, others suffocating after plunging into water bodies through prematurely melting ice. On one level, the art is a memorial to them. "With the layering of elements, in a way I'm introducing the condition to London," says Sara.

Diverging Belief Systems

The sculpture also highlights the stark contrast between the modern understanding of electricity as a resource to be utilized for profit and survival and the Sámi worldview of life force as an natural life force in animals, individuals, and the environment. The gallery's history as a fossil fuel plant is connected to this, as is what the Sámi consider eco-imperialism by Scandinavian states. In their efforts to be exemplars for sustainable power, Nordic nations have locked horns with the Sámi over the construction of windfarms, hydroelectric dams, and mines on their native soil; the Sámi argue their legal protections, livelihoods, and traditions are threatened. "It's very difficult being such a tiny group to stand your ground when the reasons are based on global sustainability," Sara observes. "Extractivism has adopted the rhetoric of sustainability, but yet it's just striving to find alternative ways to maintain practices of use."

Family Conflicts

Sara and her kin have themselves clashed with the state authorities over its increasingly stringent policies on animal husbandry. In 2016, Sara's sibling undertook a series of ultimately unsuccessful legal cases over the mandatory slaughter of his herd, ostensibly to stop overgrazing. As a show of solidarity, Sara developed a extended collection of artworks named Pile O'Sápmi comprising a massive drape of 400 cranial remains, which was shown at the 2017's art exhibition Documenta 14 and later obtained by the public gallery, where it hangs in the entryway.

Art as Advocacy

For many Sámi, art appears the exclusive sphere in which they can be listened to by the global community. Recently, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|