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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 spiral slides, and observed automated jellyfish hovering through the air. However this marks the first time they will be immersing themselves in the complex nasal chambers of a reindeer. The latest creative installation for this cavernous space—designed by Native Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—encourages visitors into a labyrinthine construction modeled after the enlarged interior of a reindeer's nose cavities. Once inside, they can stroll around or relax on pelts, listening on earphones to Sámi elders sharing narratives and wisdom.

The Significance of the Nose

Why the nose? It might sound playful, but the artwork celebrates a little-known scientific wonder: researchers have uncovered that in under a second, the reindeer's nose can warm the surrounding air it inhales by 80 degrees celsius, helping the creature to endure in inhospitable Arctic temperatures. Enlarging the nose to larger than human size, Sara says, "creates a sense of insignificance that you as a human being are not dominant over nature." The artist is a ex- writer, children's author, and land defender, who comes from a pastoral family in the Norwegian Arctic. "Possibly that creates the chance to alter your viewpoint or evoke some humility," she continues.

An Homage to Traditional Ways

The winding installation is one of several elements in Sara's absorbing commission celebrating the traditions, understanding, and worldview of the Sámi, Europe's only Indigenous people. Traditionally mobile, the Sámi total approximately 100,000 people distributed across the Norwegian north, the Finnish Arctic, the Swedish Lapland, and Russia's Kola Peninsula (an territory they call Sápmi). They've endured discrimination, integration policies, and repression of their tongue by all four states. Through highlighting the reindeer, an animal at the center of the Sámi belief system and founding narrative, the installation also highlights the people's struggles relating to the environmental emergency, loss of territory, and colonialism.

Symbolism in Materials

At the lengthy access incline, there's a soaring, eighty-five-foot structure of pelts entangled by electrical wires. It represents a symbol for the societal frameworks restricting the Sámi. Like an electrical tower, part spiritual ascent, this part of the exhibit, titled Goavve-, refers to the Sámi term for an extreme weather phenomenon, in which thick layers of ice form as varying conditions melt and solidify again the snow, encasing the reindeers' main winter food, moss. Goavvi is a consequence of climate change, which is occurring up to much more rapidly in the Polar region than elsewhere.

A few years back, I traveled to see Sara in a remote town during a goavvi winter and joined Sámi herders on their motorized sleds in freezing temperatures as they hauled containers of animal nutrition on to the barren Arctic plains to dispense through labor. The reindeer crowded round us, scratching the slippery ground in vain for lichen-covered pieces. This costly and labour-intensive procedure is having a drastic influence on herding practices—and on the animals' self-sufficiency. However the other option is death. When such conditions become commonplace, reindeer are perishing—a number from hunger, others submerging after sinking in lakes and rivers through unstable frozen surfaces. To some extent, the installation is a monument to them. "By overlapping of components, in a way I'm introducing the condition to London," says Sara.

Contrasting Belief Systems

The installation also emphasizes the clear contrast between the western understanding of energy as a asset to be exploited for gain and survival and the Sámi outlook of energy as an natural essence in animals, humans, and nature. This venue's history as a fossil fuel plant is connected to this, as is what the Sámi view as environmental exploitation by regional governments. In their efforts to be standard bearers for renewable energy, Scandinavian countries have clashed with the Sámi over the construction of wind energy projects, water power facilities, and digging operations on their traditional territory; the Sámi assert their fundamental freedoms, ways of life, and way of life are at risk. "It's challenging being such a tiny group to stand your ground when the arguments are grounded in environmental protection," Sara comments. "Resource exploitation has appropriated the language of sustainability, but still it's just striving to find better ways to continue practices of expenditure."

Individual Struggles

She and her family have personally clashed with the Norwegian government over its ever-stricter policies on reindeer management. A few years ago, Sara's brother initiated a set of finally failed court actions over the forced culling of his herd, apparently to stop overgrazing. As a show of solidarity, Sara developed a extended set of artworks titled Pile O'Sápmi featuring a massive drape of numerous reindeer skulls, which was exhibited at the the art exhibition Documenta 14 and later purchased by the National Museum of Oslo, where it is displayed in the entrance.

The Role of Art in Awareness

For many Sámi, creative work seems the only realm in which they can be heard by the global community. Two years ago, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|