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Guests to Tate Modern are used to unexpected encounters in its vast Turbine Hall. They have relaxed under an artificial sun, glided down spiral slides, and seen automated jellyfish drifting through the air. Yet this marks the inaugural time they will be immersing themselves in the complex nose cavities of a reindeer. The current artist commission for this cavernous space—created by Native Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—encourages gallerygoers into a maze-like construction inspired by the enlarged interior of a reindeer's nasal cavities. Inside, they can stroll around or unwind on pelts, tuning in on earphones to community leaders sharing narratives and wisdom.

Focus on the Nasal Passages

Why choose the nasal structure? It might sound whimsical, but the artwork pays tribute to a little-known natural marvel: researchers have uncovered that in less than one second, the reindeer's nose can raise the temperature of the surrounding air it inhales by 80°C, enabling the creature to thrive in harsh Arctic climates. Expanding the nose to human-scale dimensions, Sara notes, "creates a sense of inferiority that you as a human being are not dominant over nature." Sara is a former journalist, children's author, and land defender, who comes from a reindeer-herding family in the Norwegian Arctic. "Maybe that generates the possibility to alter your outlook or evoke some humility," she continues.

A Celebration to Sámi Culture

The labyrinthine design is among various elements in Sara's immersive art project celebrating the traditions, understanding, and worldview of the Sámi, the sole native group in Europe. Semi-nomadic, the Sámi total approximately 100,000 people ranged across northern Norway, the Finnish Arctic, the Swedish Lapland, and the Kola region (an region they call Sápmi). They've faced persecution, cultural suppression, and suppression of their language by all four countries. With an emphasis on the reindeer, an animal at the heart of the Sámi cosmology and founding narrative, the work also highlights the people's struggles relating to the global warming, property rights, and imperialism.

Metaphor in Components

Along the extended access ramp, there's a soaring, eighty-five-foot sculpture of pelts entangled by power and light cables. It can be read as a analogy for the political and economic systems constraining the Sámi. Part pylon, part celestial ladder, this component of the exhibit, titled Goavve-, relates to the Sámi word for an extreme weather phenomenon, whereby solid sheets of ice develop as varying temperatures liquefy and ice over the snow, locking in the reindeers' primary winter nourishment, moss. This phenomenon is a consequence of climate change, which is taking place up to at an accelerated rate in the Far North than in other regions.

Previously, I traveled to see Sara in Guovdageaidnu during a severe cold period and went with Sámi reindeer keepers on their snowmobiles in freezing temperatures as they carried carts of food pellets on to the wind-scoured Arctic plains to dispense through labor. The herd crowded round us, digging the icy ground in vain attempts for lichen-covered bits. This resource-intensive and demanding procedure is having a severe influence on animal rearing—and on the animals' independence. However the alternative is death. As these icy periods become commonplace, reindeer are perishing—a number from lack of food, others submerging after sinking in streams through thinning ice sheets. On one level, the work is a memorial to them. "With the layering of elements, in a way I'm bringing the condition to London," says Sara.

Contrasting Belief Systems

The installation also highlights the sharp divergence between the western interpretation of energy as a asset to be utilized for economic benefit and existence and the Sámi philosophy of vitality as an innate life force in creatures, humans, and nature. Tate Modern's past as a fossil fuel plant is connected to this, as is what the Sámi view as green colonialism by Scandinavian states. In their efforts to be exemplars for clean sources, these states have locked horns with the Sámi over the construction of windfarms, river barriers, and extraction sites on their native soil; the Sámi contend their fundamental freedoms, incomes, and traditions are endangered. "It's challenging being such a limited population to stand your ground when the reasons are based on saving the world," Sara notes. "Mining practices has appropriated the rhetoric of environmentalism, but yet it's just attempting to find more suitable ways to continue patterns of consumption."

Individual Conflicts

She and her relatives have themselves conflicted with the Norwegian government over its ever-stricter rules on reindeer management. A few years ago, Sara's sibling undertook a series of ultimately unsuccessful lawsuits over the forced culling of his herd, supposedly to stop overgrazing. To back him, Sara created a extended collection of artworks titled Pile O'Sápmi comprising a colossal screen of four hundred reindeer skulls, which was displayed at the the art exhibition Documenta 14 and later obtained by the National Museum of Oslo, where it resides in the entrance.

The Role of Art in Advocacy

Among the community, visual expression is the only sphere in which they can be understood by people of other nations. Two years ago, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|