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Guests to Tate Modern are used to unexpected experiences in its expansive Turbine Hall. They have sunbathed under an artificial sun, descended down amusement rides, and witnessed robotic jellyfish drifting through the air. However this marks the initial time they will be engaging themselves in the intricate nose chambers of a reindeer. The latest artist commission for this immense space—created by Indigenous Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—invites gallerygoers into a labyrinthine construction based on the scaled-up inside of a reindeer's nose passages. Once inside, they can stroll around or relax on reindeer hides, listening on headphones to Sámi elders imparting stories and wisdom.

Focus on the Nasal Passages

Why the nose? It could sound quirky, but the artwork pays tribute to a rarely recognized biological feat: experts have discovered that in a fraction of a second, the reindeer's nose can raise the temperature of the ambient air it inhales by 80 degrees celsius, allowing the animal to endure in inhospitable Arctic conditions. Expanding the nose to human-scale dimensions, Sara says, "generates a perception of inferiority that you as a individual are not in control over nature." Sara is a former writer, young adult author, and environmental activist, who is from a reindeer-herding family in northern Norway. "Maybe that fosters the chance to shift your perspective or evoke some humbleness," she adds.

An Homage to Traditional Ways

The winding installation is part of a elements in Sara's absorbing art project honoring the traditions, understanding, and philosophy of the Sámi, Europe's only Indigenous people. Partially migratory, the Sámi total about 100,000 people distributed across northern Norway, the Finnish Arctic, Sweden, and the Kola region (an region they call Sápmi). They've endured persecution, forced assimilation, and eradication of their tongue by all four countries. By focusing on the reindeer, an creature at the core of the Sámi cosmology and origin tale, the work also draws attention to the community's issues connected to the global warming, property rights, and imperialism.

Metaphor in Elements

At the lengthy entrance slope, there's a soaring, eighty-five-foot structure of pelts trapped by utility lines. It represents a metaphor for the political and economic systems constraining the Sámi. Like an electrical tower, part celestial ladder, this part of the artwork, titled Goavve-, relates to the Sámi name for an severe climatic event, wherein solid layers of ice develop as varying weather liquefy and solidify again the snow, trapping the reindeers' primary cold-season sustenance, lichen. The condition is a result of climate change, which is occurring up to four times faster in the Arctic than elsewhere.

Previously, I visited Sara in Guovdageaidnu during a goavvi winter and accompanied Sámi pastoralists on their Arctic vehicles in freezing temperatures as they transported carts of animal nutrition on to the barren frozen landscape to distribute manually. The reindeer crowded round us, scratching the slippery ground in vain attempts for lichen-covered pieces. This resource-intensive and demanding method is having a drastic effect on reindeer husbandry—and on the animals' self-sufficiency. Yet the choice is death. As these icy periods become frequent, reindeer are succumbing—a number from lack of food, others suffocating after falling into lakes and rivers through unstable frozen surfaces. In a sense, the art is a monument to them. "By overlapping of components, in a way I'm transporting the condition to London," says Sara.

Diverging Perspectives

The sculpture also underscores the sharp divergence between the modern understanding of energy as a resource to be utilized for gain and survival and the Sámi outlook of life force as an innate essence in creatures, humans, and the environment. This venue's legacy as a industrial facility is linked with this, as is what the Sámi see as green colonialism by regional governments. In their efforts to be standard bearers for renewable energy, Nordic nations have locked horns with the Sámi over the construction of turbine fields, hydroelectric dams, and extraction sites on their traditional territory; the Sámi contend their human rights, livelihoods, and way of life are at risk. "It's challenging being such a tiny group to defend yourself when the arguments are based on saving the world," Sara notes. "Extractivism has appropriated the rhetoric of sustainability, but yet it's just attempting to find more suitable ways to persist in patterns of expenditure."

Personal Struggles

The artist and her relatives have themselves conflicted with the national administration over its increasingly stringent regulations on reindeer management. A few years ago, Sara's brother undertook a sequence of ultimately unsuccessful lawsuits over the mandatory slaughter of his animals, apparently to stop excessive feeding. To back him, Sara developed a extended series of artworks called Pile O'Sápmi including a huge screen of numerous animal bones, which was exhibited at the the event Documenta 14 and later purchased by the National Museum of Oslo, where it is displayed in the lobby.

The Role of Art in Awareness

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