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Guests to Tate Modern are familiar to unusual experiences in its vast Turbine Hall. They've basked under an simulated sun, slid down amusement rides, and witnessed robotic jellyfish floating through the air. However this marks the initial time they will be venturing themselves in the detailed nose passages of a reindeer. The latest artist commission for this cavernous space—created by Indigenous Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—welcomes patrons into a labyrinthine structure modeled after the enlarged interior of a reindeer's nose passages. Upon entering, they can wander around or unwind on skins, tuning in on earphones to Sámi elders imparting stories and knowledge.

Why the Nose?

What's the focus on the nose? It may seem playful, but the artwork celebrates a rarely recognized scientific wonder: experts have uncovered that in less than one second, the reindeer's nose can raise the temperature of the incoming air it takes in by 80°C, enabling the animal to thrive in extreme Arctic conditions. Enlarging the nose to human-scale dimensions, Sara notes, "creates a sense of inferiority that you as a individual are not superior over nature." The artist is a ex- journalist, young adult author, and rights advocate, who comes from a pastoral family in the Norwegian Arctic. "Perhaps that fosters the potential to shift your perspective or evoke some humbleness," she adds.

A Tribute to Indigenous Heritage

The maze-like design is one of several elements in Sara's engaging commission honoring the heritage, science, and worldview of the Sámi, the continent's original inhabitants. Partially migratory, the Sámi total approximately 100,000 people distributed across northern Norway, Finland, the Swedish Lapland, and Russia's Kola Peninsula (an region they call Sápmi). They have faced persecution, integration policies, and suppression of their dialect by all four countries. With an emphasis on the reindeer, an creature at the core of the Sámi mythology and creation story, the art also draws attention to the community's challenges associated with the global warming, property rights, and imperialism.

Meaning in Materials

On the lengthy entry incline, there's a towering, eighty-five-foot formation of pelts entangled by power and light cables. It serves as a symbol for the societal frameworks constraining the Sámi. Like an electrical tower, part spiritual ascent, this section of the artwork, called Goavve-, points to the Sámi term for an extreme weather phenomenon, in which dense layers of ice appear as fluctuating weather liquefy and refreeze the snow, trapping the reindeers' primary cold-season nourishment, moss. This phenomenon is a consequence of climate change, which is taking place up to four times faster in the Arctic than elsewhere.

Three years ago, I traveled to see Sara in Guovdageaidnu during a goavvi winter and joined Sámi reindeer keepers on their motorized sleds in freezing temperatures as they hauled trailers of animal nutrition on to the exposed tundra to dispense through labor. The reindeer crowded round us, pawing the frozen ground in vain for lichen-covered pieces. This resource-intensive and labour-intensive process is having a significant effect on herding practices—and on the animals' self-sufficiency. However the other option is malnutrition. As these icy periods become routine, reindeer are dying—some from starvation, others drowning after plunging into lakes and rivers through prematurely melting ice. In a sense, the installation is a monument to them. "By overlapping of elements, in a way I'm introducing the condition to London," says Sara.

Contrasting Perspectives

This artwork also underscores the stark difference between the industrial understanding of energy as a commodity to be utilized for profit and existence and the Sámi worldview of life force as an inherent power in creatures, humans, and nature. Tate Modern's past as a coal and oil power station is linked with this, as is what the Sámi consider eco-imperialism by regional governments. As they strive to be standard bearers for renewable energy, Scandinavian countries have locked horns with the Sámi over the construction of wind energy projects, water power facilities, and extraction sites on their ancestral land; the Sámi assert their human rights, livelihoods, and traditions are threatened. "It's very difficult being such a small minority to stand your ground when the reasons are based on saving the world," Sara notes. "Resource exploitation has appropriated the rhetoric of ecology, but still it's just attempting to find alternative ways to continue habits of expenditure."

Family Struggles

She and her relatives have personally clashed with the state authorities over its ever-stricter regulations on animal husbandry. A few years ago, Sara's brother embarked on a set of unsuccessful lawsuits over the required reduction of his livestock, supposedly to stop vegetation depletion. In support, Sara developed a multi-year collection of creations named Pile O'Sápmi comprising a massive drape of 400 animal bones, which was displayed at the 2017 event Documenta 14 and later obtained by the public gallery, where it is displayed in the entryway.

Creative Expression as Awareness

Among the community, visual expression seems the sole sphere in which they can be understood by the global community. Recently, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|