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Visitors to Tate Modern are used to unusual displays in its spacious Turbine Hall. They have relaxed under an artificial sun, descended down helter skelters, and observed automated jellyfish hovering through the air. However this marks the initial time they will be venturing themselves in the intricate nose chambers of a reindeer. The newest artist commission for this immense space—developed by Native Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—invites patrons into a winding structure modeled after the scaled-up inside of a reindeer's nose airways. Inside, they can stroll around or unwind on pelts, listening on earphones to community leaders sharing stories and wisdom.

Focus on the Nasal Passages

What's the focus on the nose? It could sound whimsical, but the installation celebrates a rarely recognized biological feat: experts have discovered that in less than one second, the reindeer's nose can warm the incoming air it breathes in by 80 degrees celsius, enabling the creature to thrive in extreme Arctic conditions. Enlarging the nose to human-scale dimensions, Sara explains, "generates a perception of insignificance that you as a human being are not superior over nature." Sara is a ex- reporter, writer for kids, and rights advocate, who comes from a reindeer-herding family in northern Norway. "Possibly that creates the potential to alter your outlook or evoke some humility," she states.

A Tribute to Indigenous Heritage

The labyrinthine installation is part of a features in Sara's engaging art project honoring the heritage, understanding, and philosophy of the Sámi, the sole native group in Europe. Partially migratory, the Sámi number approximately 100,000 people ranged across northern Norway, Finland, Sweden, and Russia's Kola Peninsula (an region they call Sápmi). They have experienced persecution, cultural suppression, and suppression of their language by all four countries. By focusing on the reindeer, an animal at the center of the Sámi mythology and origin tale, the installation also spotlights the group's issues relating to the environmental emergency, property rights, and colonialism.

Metaphor in Elements

Along the long entrance slope, there's a towering, 26-metre formation of reindeer hides entangled by power and light cables. It can be read as a analogy for the political and economic systems restricting the Sámi. Like an electrical tower, part heavenly staircase, this part of the artwork, titled Goavve-, relates to the Sámi word for an severe climatic event, whereby solid sheets of ice develop as fluctuating temperatures melt and solidify again the snow, encasing the reindeers' main cold-season nourishment, fungus. This phenomenon is a result of global heating, which is occurring up to four times faster in the Arctic than elsewhere.

Previously, I traveled to see Sara in a remote town during a icy season and joined Sámi reindeer keepers on their motorized sleds in chilly conditions as they carried containers of supplementary feed on to the barren tundra to dispense through labor. These animals gathered round us, scratching the slippery ground in vain attempts for mossy morsels. This expensive and laborious procedure is having a severe impact on reindeer husbandry—and on the animals' natural survival. However the alternative is starvation. As goavvi winters become frequent, reindeer are perishing—a number from hunger, others suffocating after plunging into water bodies through prematurely melting ice. On one level, the art is a monument to them. "With the layering of components, in a way I'm bringing the phenomenon to London," says Sara.

Opposing Perspectives

The installation also highlights the stark contrast between the modern view of energy as a resource to be exploited for profit and livelihood and the Sámi worldview of energy as an inherent essence in creatures, people, and land. This venue's past as a fossil fuel plant is tied up in this, as is what the Sámi view as green colonialism by Nordic countries. In their efforts to be standard bearers for clean sources, Nordic nations have locked horns with the Sámi over the construction of wind energy projects, river barriers, and mines on their ancestral land; the Sámi assert their legal protections, ways of life, and way of life are endangered. "It's very difficult being such a small minority to protect your rights when the arguments are rooted in saving the world," Sara notes. "Mining practices has adopted the discourse of sustainability, but still it's just aiming to find more suitable ways to persist in habits of expenditure."

Individual Conflicts

The artist and her family have themselves clashed with the national administration over its ever-stricter regulations on herding. A few years ago, Sara's sibling undertook a series of unsuccessful legal cases over the required reduction of his herd, supposedly to stop excessive feeding. To back him, Sara developed a four-year series of pieces titled Pile O'Sápmi featuring a massive drape of four hundred cranial remains, which was displayed at the 2017's art exhibition Documenta 14 and later obtained by the public gallery, where it resides in the entryway.

Art as Advocacy

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