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Guests to Tate Modern are accustomed to unusual displays in its spacious Turbine Hall. They've basked under an man-made sun, slid down helter skelters, and seen automated sea creatures hovering through the air. But this marks the inaugural time they will be venturing themselves in the intricate nose chambers of a reindeer. The newest artist commission for this immense space—created by Native Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—welcomes visitors into a winding construction based on the enlarged inside of a reindeer's nose passages. Upon entering, they can meander around or unwind on pelts, listening on headphones to Sámi elders imparting stories and insights.

The Significance of the Nose

Why choose the nasal structure? It might seem whimsical, but the exhibit pays tribute to a little-known natural marvel: scientists have uncovered that in under a second, the reindeer's nose can warm the ambient air it breathes in by eighty degrees, helping the creature to survive in extreme Arctic temperatures. Enlarging the nose to larger than human size, Sara explains, "generates a feeling of smallness that you as a human being are not in control over nature." She is a ex- reporter, young adult author, and rights advocate, who is from a reindeer-herding family in the far north of Norway. "Possibly that creates the possibility to alter your outlook or evoke some modesty," she continues.

A Tribute to Sámi Culture

The maze-like structure is one of several features in Sara's engaging art project honoring the heritage, science, and worldview of the Sámi, the sole native group in Europe. Partially migratory, the Sámi number about 100,000 people spread across the Norwegian north, the Finnish Arctic, the Swedish Lapland, and the Kola region (an area they call Sápmi). They've endured discrimination, integration policies, and eradication of their dialect by all four states. By focusing on the reindeer, an creature at the core of the Sámi cosmology and origin tale, the installation also highlights the community's struggles connected to the global warming, property rights, and imperialism.

Metaphor in Elements

Along the extended entry incline, there's a soaring, 26-metre formation of pelts entangled by electrical wires. It represents a analogy for the societal frameworks limiting the Sámi. Like an electrical tower, part celestial ladder, this part of the exhibit, called Goavve-, relates to the Sámi term for an extreme weather phenomenon, whereby thick layers of ice form as changing temperatures melt and refreeze the snow, encasing the reindeers' main winter nourishment, lichen. The condition is a outcome of climate change, which is happening up to four times faster in the Polar region than elsewhere.

A few years back, I traveled to see Sara in a remote town during a icy season and joined Sámi herders 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, pawing the icy ground in vain attempts for lichen-covered morsels. This expensive and laborious method is having a severe influence on animal rearing—and on the animals' natural survival. But the other option is starvation. When such conditions become frequent, reindeer are succumbing—some from hunger, others suffocating after falling into water bodies through prematurely melting ice. On one level, the art is a memorial to them. "With the layering of materials, in a way I'm transporting the goavvi to London," says Sara.

Contrasting Belief Systems

This artwork also highlights the stark contrast between the western view of energy as a resource to be utilized for profit and survival and the Sámi outlook of life force as an innate power in creatures, individuals, and land. Tate Modern's history as a fossil fuel plant is tied up in this, as is what the Sámi see as environmental exploitation by Nordic countries. As they strive to be standard bearers for renewable energy, Nordic nations have clashed with the Sámi over the building of windfarms, hydroelectric dams, and extraction sites on their traditional territory; the Sámi assert their human rights, ways of life, and traditions are at risk. "It's challenging being such a limited population to defend yourself when the reasons are grounded in global sustainability," Sara comments. "Mining practices has adopted the discourse of environmentalism, but nonetheless it's just attempting to find more suitable ways to continue patterns of expenditure."

Personal Challenges

The artist and her relatives have themselves conflicted with the Norwegian government over its increasingly stringent policies on reindeer management. Previously, Sara's brother undertook a set of unsuccessful lawsuits over the forced culling of his animals, ostensibly to stop excessive feeding. To back him, Sara created a multi-year series of artworks titled Pile O'Sápmi featuring a huge curtain of 400 cranial remains, which was displayed at the 2017 show Documenta 14 and later obtained by the National Museum of Oslo, where it is displayed in the entrance.

Creative Expression as Activism

Among the community, visual expression is the only realm in which they can be listened to by people of other nations. Recently, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|