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Attendees to Tate Modern are used to unexpected encounters in its vast Turbine Hall. They've relaxed under an artificial sun, slid down amusement rides, and observed robotic sea creatures drifting through the air. However this marks the inaugural time they will be immersing themselves in the intricate nasal chambers of a reindeer. The current creative installation for this immense space—created by Native Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—encourages patrons into a labyrinthine design modeled after the enlarged inside of a reindeer's nose airways. Once inside, they can meander around or unwind on skins, tuning in on earphones to Sámi elders sharing tales and insights.

Focus on the Nasal Passages

What's the focus on the nose? It may seem whimsical, but the artwork honors a obscure scientific wonder: scientists have uncovered that in under a second, the reindeer's nose can heat the surrounding air it inhales by 80°C, helping the animal to endure in harsh Arctic conditions. Enlarging the nose to larger than human size, Sara says, "generates a sense of smallness that you as a human being are not dominant over nature." Sara is a former journalist, young adult author, and rights advocate, who is from a herding family in the Norwegian Arctic. "Perhaps that fosters the chance to alter your viewpoint or evoke some humbleness," she states.

An Homage to Traditional Ways

The labyrinthine structure is one of several features in Sara's engaging exhibition celebrating the traditions, understanding, and philosophy of the Sámi, the sole native group in Europe. Semi-nomadic, the Sámi count approximately 100,000 people distributed across the Norwegian north, the Finnish Arctic, Sweden, and Russia's Kola Peninsula (an region they call Sápmi). They have endured oppression, forced assimilation, and repression of their tongue by all four countries. By focusing on the reindeer, an animal at the center of the Sámi cosmology and origin tale, the installation also highlights the community's issues connected to the global warming, loss of territory, and external control.

Meaning in Components

At the extended access slope, there's a soaring, 26-metre formation of pelts trapped by power and light cables. It serves as a metaphor for the societal frameworks limiting the Sámi. Like an electrical tower, part heavenly staircase, this part of the exhibit, named Goavve-, relates to the Sámi term for an harsh environmental condition, whereby dense coatings of ice appear as fluctuating weather thaw and ice over the snow, encasing the reindeers' main winter sustenance, fungus. The condition is a outcome of planetary warming, which is happening up to four times faster in the Far North than globally.

Previously, I met with Sara in a remote town during a icy season and accompanied Sámi reindeer keepers on their Arctic vehicles in biting cold as they hauled containers of animal nutrition on to the wind-scoured Arctic plains to distribute manually. These animals surrounded round us, pawing the slippery ground in vain for mossy pieces. This resource-intensive and labour-intensive process is having a drastic impact on herding practices—and on the animals' independence. However the other option is malnutrition. When such conditions become commonplace, reindeer are dying—some from starvation, others submerging after sinking in streams through prematurely melting ice. In a sense, the art is a tribute to them. "With the layering of elements, in a way I'm introducing the phenomenon to London," says Sara.

Contrasting Worldviews

The sculpture also highlights the clear divergence between the industrial view of electricity as a asset to be utilized for profit and survival and the Sámi worldview of vitality as an natural power in animals, humans, and land. Tate Modern's legacy as a coal and oil power station is linked with this, as is what the Sámi consider eco-imperialism by Nordic countries. While attempting to be leaders for sustainable power, these states have disagreed with the Sámi over the construction of windfarms, hydroelectric dams, and mines on their traditional territory; the Sámi contend their legal protections, livelihoods, and way of life are endangered. "It's challenging being such a limited population to protect your rights when the justifications are grounded in saving the world," Sara observes. "Resource exploitation has appropriated the language of environmentalism, but still it's just striving to find alternative ways to continue practices of use."

Family Challenges

Sara and her family have personally conflicted with the state authorities over its ever-stricter rules on animal husbandry. Previously, Sara's brother undertook a set of unsuccessful lawsuits over the mandatory slaughter of his animals, apparently to stop vegetation depletion. To back him, Sara developed a multi-year set of artworks titled Pile O'Sápmi comprising a huge drape of numerous cranial remains, which was displayed at the the art exhibition Documenta 14 and later obtained by the public gallery, where it is displayed in the entryway.

The Role of Art in Advocacy

Among the community, creative work is the only realm in which they can be listened to by the global community. Two years ago, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|