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Attendees to Tate Modern are familiar to unusual encounters in its expansive Turbine Hall. They've relaxed under an simulated sun, slid down helter skelters, and seen robotic jellyfish drifting through the air. However this marks the first time they will be venturing themselves in the intricate nose passages of a reindeer. The newest artist commission for this huge space—developed by Native Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—welcomes gallerygoers into a labyrinthine design based on the expanded inside of a reindeer's nose passages. Once inside, they can wander around or unwind on pelts, tuning in on headphones to Sámi elders telling stories and insights.

Focus on the Nasal Passages

Why the nose? It could appear whimsical, but the installation celebrates a rarely recognized biological feat: experts have discovered that in less than one second, the reindeer's nose can heat the surrounding air it takes in by eighty degrees, helping the creature to thrive in extreme Arctic temperatures. Scaling the nose to human-scale dimensions, Sara explains, "generates a feeling of smallness that you as a person are not in control over nature." She is a former journalist, writer for kids, and land defender, who hails from a herding family in the Norwegian Arctic. "Maybe that generates the chance to alter your perspective or spark some humility," she continues.

A Celebration to Sámi Culture

The maze-like structure is among various elements in Sara's absorbing art project showcasing the traditions, understanding, and beliefs of the Sámi, Europe's only Indigenous people. Partially migratory, the Sámi number approximately 100,000 people distributed across northern Norway, the Finnish Arctic, the Swedish Lapland, and Russia's Kola Peninsula (an area they call Sápmi). They have experienced discrimination, forced assimilation, and suppression of their language by all four states. With an emphasis on the reindeer, an animal at the core of the Sámi cosmology and origin tale, the installation also spotlights the group's struggles relating to the environmental emergency, loss of territory, and imperialism.

Symbolism in Materials

On the long entrance slope, there's a towering, 26-metre sculpture of pelts entangled by utility lines. It represents a analogy for the political and economic systems limiting the Sámi. Part pylon, part spiritual ascent, this section of the installation, named Goavve-, relates to the Sámi term for an extreme weather phenomenon, wherein solid layers of ice develop as varying conditions thaw and solidify again the snow, locking in the reindeers' main winter food, fungus. The condition is a outcome of planetary warming, which is taking place up to much more rapidly in the Polar region than elsewhere.

Three years ago, I visited Sara in Guovdageaidnu during a goavvi winter and went with Sámi pastoralists on their Arctic vehicles in chilly conditions as they carried carts of supplementary feed on to the exposed Arctic plains to provide by hand. The herd surrounded round us, pawing the frozen ground in futility for lichen-covered bits. This costly and demanding process is having a severe influence on herding practices—and on the animals' independence. But the other option is death. As these icy periods become routine, reindeer are perishing—some from lack of food, others drowning after falling into streams 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.

Opposing Belief Systems

The sculpture also highlights the sharp contrast between the western view of electricity as a commodity to be harnessed for profit and existence and the Sámi philosophy of vitality as an inherent essence in creatures, humans, and the environment. Tate Modern's past as a fossil fuel plant is linked with this, as is what the Sámi see as environmental exploitation by regional governments. While attempting to be exemplars for renewable energy, Scandinavian countries have locked horns with the Sámi over the building of turbine fields, hydroelectric dams, and extraction sites on their native soil; the Sámi assert their legal protections, ways of life, and culture are threatened. "It's hard being such a small minority to stand your ground when the reasons are grounded in saving the world," Sara comments. "Resource exploitation has appropriated the language of environmentalism, but still it's just striving to find better ways to maintain habits of use."

Individual Challenges

Sara and her kin have personally clashed with the Norwegian government over its ever-stricter policies on reindeer management. In 2016, Sara's brother embarked on a set of finally failed lawsuits over the mandatory slaughter of his livestock, supposedly to stop vegetation depletion. In support, Sara developed a multi-year set of creations named Pile O'Sápmi including a colossal curtain of numerous reindeer skulls, which was exhibited at the 2017's event Documenta 14 and later purchased by the national institution, where it is displayed in the lobby.

The Role of Art in Awareness

Among the community, visual expression appears the sole domain in which they can be heard by people of other nations. Two years ago, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|