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Visitors to Tate Modern are accustomed to unusual experiences in its spacious Turbine Hall. They've basked under an artificial sun, descended down spiral slides, and observed AI-powered jellyfish drifting through the air. However this marks the first time they will be immersing themselves in the detailed nose chambers of a reindeer. The latest artistic project for this huge space—created by Indigenous Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—invites patrons into a winding structure based on the expanded inside of a reindeer's nasal airways. Once inside, they can meander around or unwind on skins, tuning in on headphones to community leaders sharing tales and insights.

The Significance of the Nose

Why the nose? It might appear quirky, but the exhibit honors a little-known scientific wonder: experts have discovered that in a fraction of a second, the reindeer's nose can warm the surrounding air it inhales by eighty degrees, helping the animal to endure in extreme Arctic climates. Enlarging the nose to larger than human size, Sara explains, "produces a perception of smallness that you as a individual are not superior over nature." The artist is a ex- writer, writer for kids, and rights advocate, who is from a pastoral family in the Norwegian Arctic. "Maybe that creates the potential to change your viewpoint or spark some humbleness," she adds.

A Tribute to Sámi Culture

The maze-like installation is one of several elements in Sara's immersive art project celebrating the heritage, understanding, and worldview of the Sámi, the continent's original inhabitants. Traditionally mobile, the Sámi total approximately 100,000 people spread across northern Norway, Finland, Sweden, and the Kola region (an region they call Sápmi). They have experienced discrimination, forced assimilation, and eradication of their dialect by all four nations. 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 struggles relating to the environmental emergency, land dispossession, and colonialism.

Symbolism in Components

At the extended entry incline, there's a looming, 26-metre structure of skins entangled by utility lines. It represents a analogy for the political and economic systems limiting the Sámi. Part pylon, part heavenly staircase, this component of the installation, called Goavve-, refers to the Sámi term for an severe climatic event, whereby solid coatings of ice form as fluctuating conditions liquefy and refreeze the snow, locking in the reindeers' primary cold-season food, fungus. Goavvi is a result of planetary warming, which is happening up to at an accelerated rate in the Arctic than in other regions.

A few years back, I met with Sara in a remote town during a icy season and joined Sámi pastoralists on their Arctic vehicles in chilly conditions as they hauled trailers of supplementary feed on to the exposed Arctic plains to provide through labor. The reindeer gathered round us, pawing the slippery ground in vain attempts for vegetative morsels. This expensive and laborious procedure is having a drastic influence on herding practices—and on the animals' self-sufficiency. But the alternative is malnutrition. When such conditions become commonplace, reindeer are perishing—a number from lack of food, others suffocating after sinking in lakes and rivers through thinning ice sheets. On one level, the work is a tribute to them. "By overlapping of materials, in a way I'm transporting the condition to London," says Sara.

Contrasting Perspectives

This artwork also underscores the clear divergence between the industrial interpretation of power as a asset to be exploited for gain and livelihood and the Sámi philosophy of energy as an natural essence in animals, humans, and land. Tate Modern's past as a fossil fuel plant is linked with this, as is what the Sámi consider green colonialism by Scandinavian states. In their efforts to be standard bearers for renewable energy, Scandinavian countries have locked horns with the Sámi over the development of wind energy projects, hydroelectric dams, and digging operations on their traditional territory; the Sámi argue their human rights, ways of life, and culture are at risk. "It's very difficult being such a tiny group to stand your ground when the arguments are based on environmental protection," Sara observes. "Mining practices has co-opted the language of sustainability, but yet it's just aiming to find better ways to persist in patterns of expenditure."

Family Struggles

She and her family have themselves conflicted with the national administration over its tightening rules on reindeer management. In 2016, Sara's sibling undertook a sequence of ultimately unsuccessful lawsuits over the required reduction of his livestock, apparently to stop vegetation depletion. To back him, Sara created a multi-year collection of pieces titled Pile O'Sápmi including a massive drape of numerous animal bones, which was displayed at the 2017 art exhibition Documenta 14 and later obtained by the public gallery, where it resides in the entrance.

Creative Expression as Awareness

For numerous Indigenous people, creative work appears the exclusive sphere in which they can be heard by outsiders. Recently, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|