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Guests to Tate Modern are used to unusual displays in its vast Turbine Hall. They've relaxed under an simulated sun, descended down amusement rides, and seen robotic sea creatures hovering through the air. But this marks the initial time they will be engaging themselves in the detailed nasal chambers of a reindeer. The current artist commission for this cavernous space—created by Indigenous Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—encourages gallerygoers into a labyrinthine design based on the expanded inside of a reindeer's nose passages. Once inside, they can wander around or relax on skins, tuning in on headphones to Sámi elders imparting tales and insights.

Why the Nose?

Why the nose? It could sound playful, but the installation celebrates a little-known biological feat: experts have uncovered that in a fraction of a second, the reindeer's nose can heat the incoming air it breathes in by 80°C, enabling the animal to thrive in harsh Arctic climates. Scaling the nose to human-scale dimensions, Sara notes, "generates a perception of smallness that you as a individual are not dominant over nature." She is a former writer, young adult author, and land defender, who hails from a herding family in the far north of Norway. "Perhaps that fosters the possibility to alter your perspective or spark some humility," she adds.

A Tribute to Sámi Culture

The labyrinthine structure is among various features in Sara's engaging art project showcasing the culture, understanding, and worldview of the Sámi, Europe's only Indigenous people. Partially migratory, the Sámi total roughly 100,000 people distributed across northern Norway, Finland, the Swedish Lapland, and the Russian Arctic (an area they call Sápmi). They have experienced discrimination, integration policies, and repression of their tongue by all four countries. Through highlighting the reindeer, an creature at the core of the Sámi cosmology and origin tale, the installation also highlights the group's challenges associated with the global warming, land dispossession, and colonialism.

Metaphor in Elements

At the long entry incline, there's a looming, eighty-five-foot formation of reindeer hides ensnared by utility lines. 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 artwork, called Goavve-, points to the Sámi term for an harsh environmental condition, wherein thick coatings of ice form as varying weather thaw and ice over the snow, locking in the reindeers' main winter food, moss. Goavvi is a result of global heating, which is occurring up to at an accelerated rate in the Far North than globally.

A few years back, I met with Sara in Guovdageaidnu during a severe cold period and accompanied Sámi reindeer keepers on their snowmobiles in freezing temperatures as they carried containers of supplementary feed on to the barren tundra to provide through labor. The reindeer gathered round us, scratching the frozen ground in vain attempts for vegetative pieces. This resource-intensive and demanding process is having a severe influence on animal rearing—and on the animals' self-sufficiency. But the other option is malnutrition. As these icy periods become commonplace, reindeer are dying—some from lack of food, others suffocating after plunging into water bodies through thinning ice sheets. To some extent, the art is a tribute to them. "With the layering of materials, in a way I'm bringing the goavvi to London," says Sara.

Opposing Worldviews

The sculpture also emphasizes the stark contrast between the modern view of energy as a commodity to be harnessed for gain and survival and the Sámi philosophy of vitality as an inherent life force in animals, humans, and the environment. The gallery's legacy as a fossil fuel plant is connected to this, as is what the Sámi view as eco-imperialism by Nordic countries. In their efforts to be exemplars for renewable energy, Scandinavian countries have clashed with the Sámi over the construction of wind energy projects, water power facilities, and mines on their ancestral land; the Sámi contend their human rights, livelihoods, and traditions are at risk. "It's very difficult being such a limited population to protect your rights when the arguments are based on saving the world," Sara comments. "Extractivism has appropriated the rhetoric of sustainability, but yet it's just striving to find better ways to continue habits of use."

Personal Conflicts

She and her family have personally disagreed with the state authorities over its ever-stricter regulations on animal husbandry. In 2016, Sara's sibling embarked on a set of unsuccessful lawsuits over the forced culling of his herd, apparently to stop overgrazing. As a show of solidarity, Sara created a multi-year collection of artworks titled Pile O'Sápmi comprising a huge screen of 400 cranial remains, which was shown at the 2017's event Documenta 14 and later acquired by the National Museum of Oslo, where it resides in the lobby.

Creative Expression as Activism

For numerous Indigenous people, creative work is the exclusive realm in which they can be listened to by outsiders. Two years ago, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|