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Guests to Tate Modern are familiar to unusual encounters in its vast Turbine Hall. They've basked under an man-made sun, slid down helter skelters, and observed AI-powered jellyfish hovering through the air. But this marks the first time they will be venturing themselves in the detailed nose chambers of a reindeer. The current artist commission for this cavernous space—created by Native Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—invites visitors into a maze-like design inspired by the enlarged inside of a reindeer's nasal airways. Upon entering, they can wander around or chill out on pelts, tuning in on earphones to community leaders imparting stories and wisdom.

The Significance of the Nose

Why choose the nasal structure? It might sound whimsical, but the exhibit pays tribute to a obscure natural marvel: scientists have discovered that in a fraction of a second, the reindeer's nose can warm the ambient air it inhales by 80°C, helping the creature to thrive in harsh Arctic temperatures. Scaling the nose to bigger than a person, Sara says, "generates a sense of insignificance that you as a individual are not superior over nature." The artist is a former journalist, children's author, and land defender, who comes from a reindeer-herding family in northern Norway. "Perhaps that fosters the chance to change your viewpoint or evoke some humbleness," she continues.

An Homage to Traditional Ways

The winding installation is one of several features in Sara's engaging art project celebrating the traditions, science, and philosophy of the Sámi, the continent's original inhabitants. Traditionally mobile, the Sámi total roughly 100,000 people ranged across northern Norway, Finland, Sweden, and the Kola region (an territory they call Sápmi). They have faced discrimination, forced assimilation, and eradication of their tongue by all four states. With an emphasis on the reindeer, an animal at the heart of the Sámi cosmology and founding narrative, the installation also highlights the community's challenges associated with the global warming, loss of territory, and external control.

Metaphor in Components

Along the extended entry slope, there's a soaring, 26-metre sculpture of skins trapped by power and light cables. It can be read as a symbol for the political and economic systems constraining the Sámi. Part pylon, part spiritual ascent, this part of the artwork, titled Goavve-, refers to the Sámi term for an severe climatic event, in which dense coatings of ice form as fluctuating conditions liquefy and solidify again the snow, locking in the reindeers' primary winter food, moss. Goavvi is a outcome of global heating, which is occurring up to four times faster in the Polar region than in other regions.

Previously, 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 tundra to provide through labor. The reindeer gathered round us, digging the icy ground in vain for lichen-covered pieces. This resource-intensive and demanding method is having a severe impact on herding practices—and on the animals' independence. However the other option is death. As these icy periods become routine, reindeer are perishing—some from hunger, others drowning after plunging into streams through unstable frozen surfaces. In a sense, the art is a tribute to them. "Through the stacking of materials, in a way I'm bringing the condition to London," says Sara.

Diverging Belief Systems

The sculpture also underscores the clear difference between the modern interpretation of energy as a commodity to be exploited for economic benefit and livelihood and the Sámi outlook of energy as an inherent power in creatures, people, and land. The gallery's past as a coal and oil power station is connected to this, as is what the Sámi see as green colonialism by regional governments. While attempting to be standard bearers for clean sources, Nordic nations have disagreed with the Sámi over the development of turbine fields, water power facilities, and mines on their traditional territory; the Sámi contend their human rights, ways of life, and traditions are endangered. "It's challenging being such a limited population to protect your rights when the arguments are rooted in environmental protection," Sara notes. "Resource exploitation has appropriated the discourse of sustainability, but still it's just aiming to find better ways to continue patterns of use."

Individual Challenges

Sara and her family have themselves clashed with the Norwegian government over its increasingly stringent regulations on animal husbandry. A few years ago, Sara's sibling embarked on a set of ultimately unsuccessful court actions over the required reduction of his animals, apparently to stop excessive feeding. To back him, Sara created a multi-year set of creations titled Pile O'Sápmi comprising a colossal drape of four hundred cranial remains, which was displayed at the 2017 show Documenta 14 and later acquired by the national institution, where it resides in the lobby.

The Role of Art in Awareness

Among the community, visual expression seems the sole sphere in which they can be heard by people of other nations. Two years ago, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|