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Visitors to Tate Modern are accustomed to unexpected encounters in its spacious Turbine Hall. They have basked under an man-made sun, descended down helter skelters, and witnessed AI-powered sea creatures floating through the air. But this marks the first time they will be engaging themselves in the complex nasal passages of a reindeer. The latest artistic project for this immense space—developed by Indigenous Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—encourages gallerygoers into a labyrinthine design inspired by the enlarged interior of a reindeer's nasal passages. Upon entering, they can wander around or chill out on skins, listening on headphones to Sámi elders imparting tales and wisdom.

Focus on the Nasal Passages

Why choose the nasal structure? It could seem playful, but the exhibit honors a rarely recognized natural marvel: experts have found that in a fraction of a second, the reindeer's nose can warm the ambient air it inhales by 80 degrees celsius, helping the animal to survive in inhospitable Arctic conditions. Scaling the nose to larger than human size, Sara explains, "generates a sense of smallness that you as a individual are not dominant over nature." She is a former writer, writer for kids, and land defender, who is from a pastoral family in the far north of Norway. "Maybe that generates the possibility to change your viewpoint or evoke some modesty," she continues.

An Homage to Sámi Culture

The winding installation is one of several features in Sara's immersive art project celebrating the culture, understanding, and philosophy of the Sámi, the sole native group in Europe. Partially migratory, the Sámi total about 100,000 people spread across northern Norway, Finland, the Swedish Lapland, and the Kola region (an territory they call Sápmi). They've faced oppression, cultural suppression, and repression of their tongue by all four states. By focusing on the reindeer, an animal at the center of the Sámi belief system and creation story, the installation also highlights the group's issues associated with the climate crisis, property rights, and colonialism.

Meaning in Materials

On the extended entrance ramp, there's a looming, 26-metre sculpture of pelts trapped by power and light cables. It can be read as a symbol for the political and economic systems constraining the Sámi. Partly a utility pole, part spiritual ascent, this section of the exhibit, titled Goavve-, points to the Sámi word for an harsh environmental condition, in which dense layers of ice develop as changing weather melt and refreeze the snow, encasing the reindeers' main winter nourishment, fungus. Goavvi is a outcome of global heating, which is occurring up to much more rapidly in the Far North than globally.

Previously, I met with Sara in Guovdageaidnu during a goavvi winter and accompanied Sámi reindeer keepers on their motorized sleds in biting cold as they hauled carts of food pellets on to the barren frozen landscape to distribute by hand. The reindeer crowded round us, digging the slippery ground in vain attempts for lichen-covered morsels. This expensive and labour-intensive process is having a severe influence on reindeer husbandry—and on the animals' independence. However the alternative is starvation. As goavvi winters become routine, reindeer are succumbing—some from lack of food, others suffocating after plunging into water bodies through unstable frozen surfaces. On one level, the art is a memorial to them. "With the layering of elements, in a way I'm introducing the phenomenon to London," says Sara.

Contrasting Worldviews

The installation also emphasizes the clear difference between the modern view of energy as a asset to be exploited for gain and livelihood and the Sámi philosophy of vitality as an natural essence in creatures, people, and land. The gallery's legacy as a coal and oil power station is connected to this, as is what the Sámi see as green colonialism by Scandinavian states. While attempting to be leaders for renewable energy, these states have locked horns with the Sámi over the development of wind energy projects, river barriers, and extraction sites on their native soil; the Sámi argue their legal protections, incomes, and way of life are threatened. "It's hard being such a small minority to stand your ground when the reasons are based on saving the world," Sara observes. "Mining practices has co-opted the language of sustainability, but yet it's just striving to find alternative ways to persist in practices of expenditure."

Individual Struggles

The artist and her kin have themselves conflicted with the state authorities over its tightening rules on reindeer management. In 2016, Sara's brother undertook a series of ultimately unsuccessful legal cases over the required reduction of his animals, apparently to stop excessive feeding. As a show of solidarity, Sara created a four-year set of pieces named Pile O'Sápmi including a huge curtain of numerous cranial remains, which was displayed at the 2017's art exhibition Documenta 14 and later acquired by the public gallery, where it resides in the entrance.

Creative Expression as Advocacy

For many Sámi, creative work seems the sole domain in which they can be understood by people of other nations. Recently, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|