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Attendees to Tate Modern are familiar to unexpected encounters in its spacious Turbine Hall. They've basked under an simulated sun, slid down amusement rides, and observed automated sea creatures drifting through the air. However this marks the inaugural time they will be venturing themselves in the intricate nasal cavities of a reindeer. The newest artist commission for this huge space—designed by Native Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—encourages patrons into a maze-like design modeled after the enlarged inside of a reindeer's nasal cavities. Inside, they can wander around or unwind on pelts, tuning in on headphones to Sámi elders imparting tales and insights.

Focus on the Nasal Passages

Why the nose? It may seem whimsical, but the artwork honors a rarely recognized natural marvel: scientists have found that in less than one second, the reindeer's nose can warm the incoming air it takes in by eighty degrees, enabling the creature to endure in extreme Arctic climates. Expanding the nose to bigger than a person, Sara notes, "generates a feeling of inferiority that you as a human being are not in control over nature." She is a ex- journalist, children's author, and land defender, who comes from a pastoral family in northern Norway. "Possibly that creates the potential to alter your viewpoint or evoke some humility," she continues.

A Celebration to Sámi Culture

The winding structure is one of several elements in Sara's engaging commission showcasing the heritage, knowledge, and worldview of the Sámi, the sole native group in Europe. Semi-nomadic, the Sámi count roughly 100,000 people ranged across the Norwegian north, Finland, the Swedish Lapland, and the Russian Arctic (an area they call Sápmi). They have endured persecution, cultural suppression, and repression of their language by all four countries. By focusing on the reindeer, an creature at the center of the Sámi cosmology and origin tale, the installation also highlights the people's challenges relating to the global warming, land dispossession, and imperialism.

Metaphor in Components

Along the extended entry incline, there's a towering, 26-metre formation of skins ensnared by power and light cables. It can be read as a analogy for the governance and financial structures restricting the Sámi. Part pylon, part spiritual ascent, this part of the artwork, titled Goavve-, relates to the Sámi term for an severe climatic event, whereby dense coatings of ice develop as fluctuating weather thaw and ice over the snow, trapping the reindeers' main winter sustenance, fungus. The condition is a outcome of global heating, which is occurring up to four times faster in the Far North than in other regions.

Three years ago, I met with Sara in the Norwegian far north during a goavvi winter and joined Sámi reindeer keepers on their motorized sleds in biting cold as they hauled trailers of food pellets on to the wind-scoured frozen landscape to distribute through labor. These animals gathered round us, scratching the icy ground in futility for lichen-covered morsels. This expensive and labour-intensive process is having a significant influence on reindeer husbandry—and on the animals' independence. However the choice is starvation. As goavvi winters become frequent, reindeer are dying—a number from hunger, others suffocating after falling into lakes and rivers through prematurely melting ice. To some extent, the art is a monument to them. "Through the stacking of materials, in a way I'm transporting the phenomenon to London," says Sara.

Contrasting Belief Systems

The sculpture also emphasizes the sharp difference between the modern interpretation of energy as a resource to be exploited for gain and survival and the Sámi worldview of energy as an innate essence in animals, people, and nature. Tate Modern's legacy as a fossil fuel plant is connected to this, as is what the Sámi see as eco-imperialism by Nordic countries. While attempting to be exemplars for renewable energy, Nordic nations have locked horns with the Sámi over the building of windfarms, river barriers, and mines on their native soil; the Sámi argue their human rights, incomes, and way of life are endangered. "It's hard being such a small minority to stand your ground when the justifications are grounded in environmental protection," Sara comments. "Resource exploitation has adopted the rhetoric of sustainability, but nonetheless it's just striving to find alternative ways to continue patterns of use."

Family Struggles

Sara and her relatives have personally clashed with the Norwegian government over its increasingly stringent regulations on animal husbandry. A few years ago, Sara's sibling embarked on a sequence of unsuccessful court actions over the required reduction of his animals, apparently to stop excessive feeding. As a show of solidarity, Sara developed a extended set of artworks called Pile O'Sápmi including a huge curtain of four hundred cranial remains, which was displayed at the 2017's art exhibition Documenta 14 and later acquired by the National Museum of Oslo, where it resides in the entryway.

Art as Activism

For many Sámi, art appears the exclusive realm in which they can be listened to by outsiders. Recently, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|