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Guests to Tate Modern are used to unexpected displays in its vast Turbine Hall. They've relaxed under an simulated sun, descended down spiral slides, and witnessed robotic jellyfish hovering through the air. Yet this marks the first time they will be immersing themselves in the intricate nose passages of a reindeer. The latest artistic project for this cavernous space—created by Native Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—invites gallerygoers into a maze-like structure based on the scaled-up inside of a reindeer's nose cavities. Inside, they can meander around or chill out on pelts, tuning in on headphones to tribal seniors sharing tales and knowledge.

The Significance of the Nose

Why choose the nasal structure? It may sound whimsical, but the installation celebrates a rarely recognized natural marvel: researchers have found that in a fraction of a second, the reindeer's nose can warm the ambient air it takes in by eighty degrees, helping the creature to survive in extreme Arctic conditions. Expanding the nose to human-scale dimensions, Sara notes, "generates a perception of inferiority that you as a human being are not superior over nature." The artist is a former writer, children's author, and environmental activist, who comes from a herding family in northern Norway. "Maybe that generates the possibility to shift your outlook or evoke some humility," she adds.

A Celebration to Traditional Ways

The winding structure is one of several features in Sara's immersive commission honoring the culture, understanding, and philosophy of the Sámi, the continent's original inhabitants. Partially migratory, the Sámi total about 100,000 people ranged across northern Norway, the Finnish Arctic, Sweden, and Russia's Kola Peninsula (an territory they call Sápmi). They have endured persecution, cultural suppression, and repression of their dialect by all four states. Through highlighting the reindeer, an animal at the center of the Sámi cosmology and origin tale, the work also draws attention to the people's challenges associated with the climate crisis, loss of territory, and imperialism.

Metaphor in Elements

On the extended entry slope, there's a looming, 26-metre sculpture of pelts ensnared by electrical wires. It serves as a symbol for the political and economic systems constraining the Sámi. Like an electrical tower, part heavenly staircase, this component of the artwork, named Goavve-, refers to the Sámi word for an extreme weather phenomenon, wherein solid coatings of ice develop as fluctuating temperatures thaw and ice over the snow, encasing the reindeers' key cold-season nourishment, moss. This phenomenon is a result of global heating, which is happening up to four times faster in the Arctic than in other regions.

Three years ago, I met with Sara in Guovdageaidnu during a icy season and went with Sámi herders on their snowmobiles in biting cold as they carried trailers of food pellets on to the wind-scoured frozen landscape to dispense manually. The reindeer gathered round us, scratching the slippery ground in vain for vegetative pieces. This expensive and laborious procedure is having a severe impact on reindeer husbandry—and on the animals' independence. However the alternative is death. As goavvi winters become commonplace, reindeer are succumbing—some from lack of food, others submerging after falling into water bodies through thinning ice sheets. To some extent, the art is a memorial to them. "By overlapping of materials, in a way I'm bringing the goavvi to London," says Sara.

Contrasting Perspectives

This artwork also highlights the stark divergence between the modern view of electricity as a resource to be utilized for economic benefit and survival and the Sámi philosophy of energy as an natural power in animals, individuals, and the environment. Tate Modern's history as a industrial facility is linked with this, as is what the Sámi consider eco-imperialism by Scandinavian states. While attempting to be standard bearers for renewable energy, Scandinavian countries have clashed with the Sámi over the construction of turbine fields, hydroelectric dams, and digging operations on their native soil; the Sámi contend their legal protections, livelihoods, and culture are endangered. "It's challenging being such a limited population to stand your ground when the arguments are based on global sustainability," Sara observes. "Resource exploitation has co-opted the language of sustainability, but still it's just striving to find alternative ways to maintain habits of expenditure."

Family Struggles

The artist and her kin have personally clashed with the Norwegian government over its ever-stricter policies on reindeer management. Previously, Sara's sibling initiated a set of finally failed court actions over the mandatory slaughter of his herd, apparently to stop excessive feeding. In support, Sara developed a extended collection of artworks titled Pile O'Sápmi featuring a huge screen of four hundred cranial remains, which was displayed at the the art exhibition Documenta 14 and later obtained by the national institution, where it hangs in the entryway.

Art as Awareness

For many Sámi, creative work is the sole domain in which they can be heard by people of other nations. Two years ago, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|