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Visitors to Tate Modern are used to surprising displays in its expansive Turbine Hall. They have sunbathed under an man-made sun, glided down spiral slides, and witnessed automated jellyfish hovering through the air. But this marks the inaugural time they will be venturing themselves in the intricate nasal cavities of a reindeer. The current creative installation for this huge space—created by Native Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—encourages patrons into a labyrinthine design modeled after the scaled-up inside of a reindeer's nose airways. Upon entering, they can stroll around or relax on skins, tuning in on headphones to community leaders imparting narratives and wisdom.

The Significance of the Nose

Why choose the nasal structure? It could appear whimsical, but the installation honors a little-known natural marvel: scientists have found that in under a second, the reindeer's nose can raise the temperature of the ambient air it breathes in by 80 degrees celsius, helping the animal to survive in extreme Arctic temperatures. Enlarging the nose to bigger than a person, Sara notes, "generates a sense of smallness that you as a individual are not dominant over nature." She is a former writer, young adult author, and rights advocate, who hails from a pastoral family in the far north of Norway. "Maybe that generates the potential to alter your perspective or spark some humility," she states.

An Homage to Sámi Culture

The winding design is one of several elements in Sara's absorbing commission celebrating the traditions, science, and philosophy of the Sámi, the sole native group in Europe. Partially migratory, the Sámi number approximately 100,000 people ranged across the Norwegian north, the Finnish Arctic, the Swedish Lapland, and the Kola region (an region they call Sápmi). They've experienced discrimination, integration policies, and suppression of their language by all four nations. With an emphasis on the reindeer, an creature at the core of the Sámi cosmology and creation story, the installation also highlights the community's issues connected to the environmental emergency, land dispossession, and imperialism.

Meaning in Components

Along the long entrance ramp, there's a towering, eighty-five-foot formation of reindeer hides ensnared by utility lines. It can be read as a metaphor for the societal frameworks restricting the Sámi. Partly a utility pole, part spiritual ascent, this component of the installation, called Goavve-, relates to the Sámi name for an extreme weather phenomenon, in which solid coatings of ice form as fluctuating temperatures melt and solidify again the snow, locking in the reindeers' primary cold-season nourishment, lichen. This phenomenon is a consequence of global heating, which is taking place up to at an accelerated rate in the Polar region than in other regions.

Previously, I visited Sara in the Norwegian far north during a icy season and joined Sámi herders on their motorized sleds in chilly conditions as they carried containers of supplementary feed on to the exposed tundra to provide by hand. The reindeer crowded round us, scratching the icy ground in vain attempts for lichen-covered bits. This costly and demanding method is having a significant effect on animal rearing—and on the animals' independence. Yet the other option is death. As these icy periods become commonplace, reindeer are dying—some from hunger, others submerging after plunging into water bodies through prematurely melting ice. On one level, the installation is a memorial to them. "By overlapping of elements, in a way I'm transporting the goavvi to London," says Sara.

Contrasting Perspectives

This artwork also underscores the stark difference between the industrial interpretation of power as a commodity to be exploited for economic benefit and livelihood and the Sámi philosophy of life force as an inherent life force in animals, individuals, and the environment. This venue's past as a fossil fuel plant is linked with this, as is what the Sámi consider green colonialism by Nordic countries. In their efforts to be exemplars for sustainable power, Scandinavian countries have locked horns with the Sámi over the building of turbine fields, hydroelectric dams, and digging operations on their native soil; the Sámi contend their human rights, ways of life, and traditions are endangered. "It's very difficult being such a small minority to protect your rights when the arguments are rooted in global sustainability," Sara observes. "Extractivism has adopted the language of environmentalism, but yet it's just aiming to find better ways to maintain patterns of consumption."

Individual Struggles

The artist and her kin have themselves conflicted with the Norwegian government over its increasingly stringent policies on animal husbandry. Previously, Sara's sibling initiated a sequence of finally failed legal cases over the mandatory slaughter of his livestock, supposedly to stop overgrazing. To back him, Sara produced a extended set of creations called Pile O'Sápmi including a colossal drape of 400 animal bones, which was exhibited at the 2017's art exhibition Documenta 14 and later purchased by the public gallery, where it is displayed in the lobby.

The Role of Art in Advocacy

Among the community, art appears the exclusive realm in which they can be understood by people of other nations. Two years ago, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|