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Guests to Tate Modern are familiar to surprising displays in its spacious Turbine Hall. They have sunbathed under an artificial sun, slid down helter skelters, and observed robotic sea creatures drifting through the air. Yet this marks the first time they will be immersing themselves in the intricate nose cavities of a reindeer. The newest artistic project for this huge space—developed by Native Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—encourages patrons into a winding construction based on the expanded interior of a reindeer's nose passages. Inside, they can wander around or relax on skins, tuning in on earphones to tribal seniors sharing stories and insights.

The Significance of the Nose

Why the nose? It might appear whimsical, but the installation pays tribute to a rarely recognized natural marvel: experts have discovered that in less than one second, the reindeer's nose can warm the surrounding air it takes in by 80°C, allowing the animal to thrive in extreme Arctic climates. Enlarging the nose to larger than human size, Sara explains, "produces a feeling of inferiority that you as a person are not in control over nature." She is a former writer, writer for kids, and environmental activist, who comes from a reindeer-herding family in the far north of Norway. "Maybe that generates the chance to alter your outlook or spark some modesty," she states.

A Celebration to Indigenous Heritage

The winding installation is part of a features in Sara's immersive art project honoring the traditions, knowledge, and philosophy of the Sámi, Europe's only Indigenous people. Semi-nomadic, the Sámi total roughly 100,000 people ranged across the Norwegian north, Finland, Sweden, and the Kola region (an area they call Sápmi). They have experienced persecution, integration policies, and repression of their language by all four nations. By focusing on the reindeer, an animal at the center of the Sámi mythology and origin tale, the installation also highlights the community's challenges relating to the global warming, loss of territory, and external control.

Meaning in Elements

On the long access ramp, there's a towering, eighty-five-foot sculpture of skins entangled by power and light cables. It can be read as a metaphor for the political and economic systems restricting the Sámi. Partly a utility pole, part spiritual ascent, this component of the installation, titled Goavve-, refers to the Sámi name for an harsh environmental condition, in which solid layers of ice develop as varying temperatures thaw and ice over the snow, encasing the reindeers' main winter food, fungus. The condition is a consequence of planetary warming, which is happening up to four times faster in the Polar region than in other regions.

Three years ago, I traveled to see Sara in the Norwegian far north during a icy season and accompanied Sámi reindeer keepers on their Arctic vehicles in biting cold as they transported carts of food pellets on to the barren Arctic plains to distribute through labor. These animals crowded round us, digging the slippery ground in vain attempts for vegetative morsels. This resource-intensive and laborious process is having a drastic influence on herding practices—and on the animals' natural survival. But the choice is malnutrition. As these icy periods become routine, reindeer are perishing—a number from lack of food, others suffocating after plunging into streams through thinning ice sheets. On one level, the art is a tribute to them. "With the layering of elements, in a way I'm introducing the condition to London," says Sara.

Diverging Worldviews

The sculpture also underscores the stark divergence between the western view of power as a asset to be harnessed for economic benefit and survival and the Sámi philosophy of energy as an inherent essence in creatures, individuals, and nature. Tate Modern's legacy as a industrial facility is connected to this, as is what the Sámi view as eco-imperialism by Scandinavian states. In their efforts to be standard bearers for renewable energy, Scandinavian countries have disagreed with the Sámi over the building of wind energy projects, hydroelectric dams, and digging operations on their native soil; the Sámi contend their human rights, ways of life, and way of life are endangered. "It's very difficult being such a limited population to defend yourself when the justifications are based on saving the world," Sara notes. "Extractivism has co-opted the language of ecology, but yet it's just attempting to find more suitable ways to maintain patterns of expenditure."

Family Conflicts

She and her family have personally conflicted with the Norwegian government over its ever-stricter regulations on reindeer management. A few years ago, Sara's sibling embarked on a sequence of unsuccessful legal cases over the mandatory slaughter of his herd, supposedly to stop vegetation depletion. To back him, Sara produced a extended series of artworks called Pile O'Sápmi comprising a huge screen of 400 animal bones, which was shown at the 2017 show Documenta 14 and later acquired by the national institution, where it is displayed in the lobby.

Art as Awareness

For numerous Indigenous people, art seems the only sphere in which they can be listened to by people of other nations. Recently, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|