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Visitors to Tate Modern are familiar to unexpected displays in its spacious Turbine Hall. They've relaxed under an artificial sun, slid down spiral slides, and seen automated sea creatures hovering through the air. Yet this marks the inaugural time they will be engaging themselves in the intricate nasal chambers of a reindeer. The newest creative installation for this cavernous space—designed by Native Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—welcomes patrons into a winding design modeled after the enlarged interior of a reindeer's nasal passages. Inside, they can wander around or relax on pelts, tuning in on headphones to tribal seniors sharing tales and insights.

The Significance of the Nose

Why the nose? It might sound playful, but the artwork honors a rarely recognized scientific wonder: researchers have discovered that in under a second, the reindeer's nose can raise the temperature of the incoming air it inhales by 80°C, enabling the animal to survive in harsh Arctic temperatures. Expanding the nose to larger than human size, Sara notes, "produces a sense of smallness that you as a human being are not in control over nature." Sara is a former journalist, young adult author, and environmental activist, who comes from a reindeer-herding family in the far north of Norway. "Maybe that creates the possibility to change your viewpoint or trigger some humility," she adds.

An Homage to Indigenous Heritage

The winding structure is one of several elements in Sara's engaging art project celebrating the culture, science, and worldview of the Sámi, Europe's only Indigenous people. Partially migratory, the Sámi total roughly 100,000 people ranged across northern Norway, Finland, the Swedish Lapland, and Russia's Kola Peninsula (an territory they call Sápmi). They have endured persecution, forced assimilation, and eradication of their tongue by all four countries. With an emphasis on the reindeer, an creature at the center of the Sámi cosmology and origin tale, the art also highlights the people's struggles relating to the climate crisis, loss of territory, and external control.

Metaphor in Materials

At the lengthy access ramp, there's a looming, eighty-five-foot structure of reindeer hides ensnared by electrical wires. It can be read as a symbol for the political and economic systems restricting the Sámi. Part pylon, part spiritual ascent, this section of the artwork, called Goavve-, relates to the Sámi name for an severe climatic event, in which dense sheets of ice appear as changing conditions liquefy and solidify again the snow, trapping the reindeers' primary winter food, moss. This phenomenon is a consequence of climate change, which is taking place up to much more rapidly in the Far North than in other regions.

A few years back, I visited Sara in a remote town during a severe cold period and joined Sámi pastoralists on their motorized sleds in chilly conditions as they carried trailers of food pellets on to the barren Arctic plains to provide manually. These animals gathered round us, digging the slippery ground in futility for mossy morsels. This expensive and laborious process is having a drastic influence on herding practices—and on the animals' natural survival. Yet the choice is starvation. When such conditions become frequent, reindeer are perishing—a number from starvation, others suffocating after falling into lakes and rivers through unstable frozen surfaces. On one level, the work is a monument to them. "Through the stacking of components, in a way I'm bringing the goavvi to London," says Sara.

Contrasting Belief Systems

The sculpture also highlights the stark contrast between the modern interpretation of electricity as a resource to be utilized for profit and survival and the Sámi philosophy of life force as an inherent essence in animals, people, and the environment. Tate Modern's legacy as a fossil fuel plant is linked with this, as is what the Sámi view as environmental exploitation by Scandinavian states. As they strive to be leaders for clean sources, Nordic nations have disagreed with the Sámi over the development of wind energy projects, hydroelectric dams, and digging operations on their native soil; the Sámi contend their human rights, ways of life, and culture are at risk. "It's hard being such a small minority to protect your rights when the justifications are based on global sustainability," Sara notes. "Resource exploitation has co-opted the language of sustainability, but still it's just striving to find alternative ways to maintain practices of use."

Family Challenges

Sara and her relatives have themselves clashed with the state authorities over its tightening policies on reindeer management. A few years ago, Sara's sibling embarked on a set of unsuccessful lawsuits over the mandatory slaughter of his animals, apparently to stop excessive feeding. In support, Sara developed a four-year collection of pieces named Pile O'Sápmi including a massive screen of 400 cranial remains, which was shown at the 2017's art exhibition Documenta 14 and later obtained by the national institution, where it hangs in the lobby.

Creative Expression as Activism

Among the community, art appears the sole domain in which they can be listened to by people of other nations. Recently, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|