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Attendees to Tate Modern are used to unusual encounters in its expansive Turbine Hall. They've relaxed under an artificial sun, slid down amusement rides, and witnessed automated sea creatures floating through the air. But this marks the inaugural time they will be immersing themselves in the intricate nasal chambers of a reindeer. The latest creative installation for this cavernous space—developed by Native Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—encourages visitors into a labyrinthine structure modeled after the expanded interior of a reindeer's nasal airways. Once inside, they can meander around or chill out on skins, listening on headphones to community leaders imparting tales and insights.

Focus on the Nasal Passages

Why the nose? It could seem playful, but the installation honors a rarely recognized scientific wonder: experts have uncovered that in under a second, the reindeer's nose can raise the temperature of the incoming air it takes in by 80°C, allowing the creature to survive in harsh Arctic conditions. Scaling the nose to bigger than a person, Sara explains, "generates a sense of inferiority that you as a human being are not in control over nature." Sara is a former journalist, young adult author, and environmental activist, who is from a herding family in the Norwegian Arctic. "Perhaps that fosters the potential to alter your viewpoint or trigger some humbleness," she continues.

A Tribute to Traditional Ways

The maze-like installation is part of a features in Sara's absorbing commission honoring the culture, understanding, and beliefs of the Sámi, Europe's only Indigenous people. Traditionally mobile, the Sámi count about 100,000 people ranged across the Norwegian north, Finland, Sweden, and Russia's Kola Peninsula (an region they call Sápmi). They've endured oppression, cultural suppression, and repression of their language by all four states. By focusing on the reindeer, an animal at the center of the Sámi mythology and origin tale, the installation also spotlights the people's issues associated with the global warming, property rights, and imperialism.

Meaning in Elements

On the extended entrance incline, there's a towering, 26-metre sculpture of pelts ensnared by power and light cables. It serves as a symbol for the political and economic systems constraining the Sámi. Part pylon, part spiritual ascent, this section of the artwork, named Goavve-, refers to the Sámi word for an severe climatic event, whereby dense layers of ice develop as varying conditions thaw and solidify again the snow, encasing the reindeers' main winter sustenance, moss. Goavvi is a outcome of global heating, which is happening up to at an accelerated rate in the Far North than in other regions.

A few years back, I traveled to see Sara in the Norwegian far north during a icy season and accompanied Sámi reindeer keepers on their snowmobiles in biting cold as they carried trailers of supplementary feed on to the exposed frozen landscape to dispense through labor. The reindeer surrounded round us, scratching the slippery ground in vain for vegetative bits. This expensive and laborious method is having a severe effect on animal rearing—and on the animals' independence. Yet the other option is malnutrition. As goavvi winters become frequent, reindeer are dying—a number from starvation, others drowning after plunging into streams through prematurely melting ice. In a sense, the art is a memorial to them. "Through the stacking of materials, in a way I'm introducing the goavvi to London," says Sara.

Contrasting Worldviews

The installation also underscores the sharp difference between the industrial view of power as a commodity to be utilized for gain and survival and the Sámi worldview of life force as an innate essence in creatures, people, and the environment. This venue's past as a fossil fuel plant is connected to this, as is what the Sámi view as eco-imperialism by regional governments. While attempting to be standard bearers for renewable energy, Nordic nations have disagreed with the Sámi over the building of turbine fields, hydroelectric dams, and extraction sites on their native soil; the Sámi assert their human rights, livelihoods, and traditions are endangered. "It's challenging being such a tiny group to defend yourself when the reasons are grounded in global sustainability," Sara comments. "Extractivism has co-opted the language of environmentalism, but still it's just attempting to find better ways to maintain patterns of use."

Individual Conflicts

She and her kin have themselves disagreed with the national administration over its ever-stricter regulations on herding. A few years ago, Sara's brother initiated a sequence of finally failed court actions over the forced culling of his livestock, ostensibly to stop overgrazing. To back him, Sara produced a multi-year series of pieces named Pile O'Sápmi comprising a colossal drape of four hundred cranial remains, which was displayed at the the event Documenta 14 and later purchased by the public gallery, where it is displayed in the entrance.

Art as Activism

For numerous Indigenous people, visual expression is the exclusive sphere in which they can be understood by outsiders. Two years ago, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|