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Guests to Tate Modern are familiar to unusual encounters in its spacious Turbine Hall. They have sunbathed under an artificial sun, glided 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 detailed nasal cavities of a reindeer. The newest creative installation for this cavernous space—created by Native Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—invites gallerygoers into a maze-like construction based on the enlarged interior of a reindeer's nose airways. Once inside, they can wander around or relax on pelts, tuning in on headphones to community leaders imparting stories and knowledge.

The Significance of the Nose

Why the nose? It could sound whimsical, but the artwork pays tribute to a obscure biological feat: scientists have found that in under a second, the reindeer's nose can heat the surrounding air it takes in by eighty degrees, enabling the creature to thrive in inhospitable Arctic temperatures. Expanding the nose to bigger than a person, Sara says, "creates a perception of smallness that you as a human being are not in control over nature." The artist is a ex- reporter, young adult author, and environmental activist, who is from a pastoral family in the Norwegian Arctic. "Possibly that creates the chance to shift your perspective or trigger some humbleness," she adds.

A Celebration to Sámi Culture

The labyrinthine installation is part of a components in Sara's engaging commission showcasing the culture, knowledge, and worldview of the Sámi, the sole native group in Europe. Partially migratory, the Sámi count about 100,000 people distributed across the Norwegian north, Finland, Sweden, and the Kola region (an region they call Sápmi). They have endured discrimination, forced assimilation, and repression of their dialect by all four countries. Through highlighting the reindeer, an animal at the center of the Sámi belief system and origin tale, the work also spotlights the community's challenges associated with the climate crisis, loss of territory, and colonialism.

Symbolism in Materials

On the long access slope, there's a looming, eighty-five-foot sculpture of pelts trapped by electrical wires. It represents a symbol for the political and economic systems limiting the Sámi. Part pylon, part heavenly staircase, this part of the installation, titled Goavve-, points to the Sámi word for an extreme weather phenomenon, whereby dense sheets of ice develop as fluctuating conditions thaw and refreeze the snow, trapping the reindeers' primary winter nourishment, fungus. This phenomenon is a consequence of global heating, which is happening up to at an accelerated rate in the Far North than globally.

Three years ago, I met with Sara in Guovdageaidnu during a severe cold period and accompanied Sámi pastoralists on their Arctic vehicles in biting cold as they transported containers of animal nutrition on to the barren Arctic plains to provide manually. The herd crowded round us, scratching the frozen ground in vain for mossy bits. This resource-intensive and laborious procedure is having a severe effect on reindeer husbandry—and on the animals' independence. However the choice is malnutrition. As these icy periods become commonplace, reindeer are dying—some from starvation, others drowning after plunging into water bodies through unstable frozen surfaces. In a sense, the art is a tribute to them. "By overlapping of materials, in a way I'm bringing the phenomenon to London," says Sara.

Opposing Worldviews

This artwork also emphasizes the stark contrast between the western view of power as a asset to be harnessed for economic benefit and existence and the Sámi worldview of energy as an natural life force in animals, humans, and nature. The gallery's legacy as a fossil fuel plant is linked with this, as is what the Sámi consider eco-imperialism by Scandinavian states. As they strive to be exemplars for renewable energy, Scandinavian countries have disagreed with the Sámi over the building of wind energy projects, hydroelectric dams, and mines on their ancestral land; the Sámi argue their fundamental freedoms, incomes, and way of life are threatened. "It's very difficult being such a limited population to stand your ground when the reasons are based on saving the world," Sara observes. "Resource exploitation has appropriated the rhetoric of sustainability, but still it's just attempting to find alternative ways to persist in habits of use."

Personal Challenges

The artist and her relatives have personally clashed with the national administration over its ever-stricter regulations on reindeer management. Previously, Sara's sibling undertook a set of finally failed court actions over the mandatory slaughter of his animals, supposedly to stop vegetation depletion. To back him, Sara created a extended set of pieces titled Pile O'Sápmi featuring a huge curtain of numerous cranial remains, which was displayed at the 2017 show Documenta 14 and later obtained by the public gallery, where it is displayed in the entryway.

The Role of Art in Activism

Among the community, art appears the exclusive domain in which they can be understood by the global community. Recently, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|