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Attendees to Tate Modern are used to unexpected experiences in its expansive Turbine Hall. They have relaxed under an simulated sun, descended down spiral slides, and observed automated jellyfish drifting through the air. Yet this marks the inaugural time they will be venturing themselves in the detailed nose passages of a reindeer. The current creative installation for this huge space—developed by Native Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—invites visitors into a labyrinthine structure inspired by the enlarged interior of a reindeer's nose cavities. Inside, they can wander around or unwind on pelts, tuning in on headphones to Sámi elders telling stories and knowledge.

Focus on the Nasal Passages

Why the nose? It could sound playful, but the installation celebrates a obscure biological feat: scientists have uncovered that in under a second, the reindeer's nose can heat the incoming air it takes in by 80 degrees celsius, helping the animal to endure in harsh Arctic climates. Expanding the nose to bigger than a person, Sara says, "creates a sense of insignificance that you as a person are not in control over nature." She is a ex- reporter, children's author, and environmental activist, who is from a herding family in the far north of Norway. "Maybe that generates the possibility to shift your viewpoint or evoke some modesty," she states.

A Tribute to Indigenous Heritage

The maze-like design is one of several features in Sara's immersive art project honoring the traditions, knowledge, and worldview of the Sámi, the sole native group in Europe. Partially migratory, the Sámi total roughly 100,000 people ranged across northern Norway, Finland, the Swedish Lapland, and Russia's Kola Peninsula (an region they call Sápmi). They have experienced oppression, cultural suppression, and suppression of their dialect by all four nations. With an emphasis on the reindeer, an creature at the core of the Sámi cosmology and origin tale, the installation also highlights the people's issues associated with the environmental emergency, loss of territory, and imperialism.

Symbolism in Components

On the extended entry slope, there's a looming, eighty-five-foot structure of reindeer hides entangled by electrical wires. It represents a analogy for the political and economic systems limiting the Sámi. Partly a utility pole, part heavenly staircase, this section of the artwork, called Goavve-, points to the Sámi name for an harsh environmental condition, whereby thick coatings of ice develop as fluctuating conditions liquefy and ice over the snow, encasing the reindeers' primary cold-season sustenance, moss. The condition is a consequence of planetary warming, which is happening up to much more rapidly in the Far North than in other regions.

Previously, I traveled to see Sara in Guovdageaidnu during a icy season and went with Sámi herders on their Arctic vehicles in freezing temperatures as they hauled carts of animal nutrition on to the barren tundra to provide manually. The herd gathered round us, digging the icy ground in futility for mossy pieces. This expensive and laborious method is having a significant influence on animal rearing—and on the animals' independence. However the alternative is death. As goavvi winters become frequent, reindeer are dying—a number from starvation, others submerging after plunging into lakes and rivers through thinning ice sheets. To some extent, the art is a monument to them. "With the layering of elements, in a way I'm bringing the goavvi to London," says Sara.

Opposing Perspectives

The installation also underscores the clear divergence between the western interpretation of power as a commodity to be harnessed for economic benefit and livelihood and the Sámi philosophy of life force as an inherent power in animals, individuals, and nature. The gallery's past as a coal and oil power station is connected to this, as is what the Sámi consider green colonialism by Nordic countries. In their efforts to be standard bearers for sustainable power, Nordic nations have clashed with the Sámi over the building of turbine fields, hydroelectric dams, and extraction sites on their traditional territory; the Sámi contend their legal protections, ways of life, and traditions are threatened. "It's hard being such a tiny group to defend yourself when the justifications are rooted in saving the world," Sara comments. "Resource exploitation has adopted the discourse of sustainability, but yet it's just aiming to find more suitable ways to continue habits of use."

Personal Conflicts

She and her relatives have themselves disagreed with the national administration over its ever-stricter regulations on herding. A few years ago, Sara's sibling undertook a sequence of ultimately unsuccessful lawsuits over the mandatory slaughter of his herd, apparently to stop vegetation depletion. In support, Sara produced a four-year collection of artworks called Pile O'Sápmi featuring a colossal drape of four hundred cranial remains, which was shown at the the event Documenta 14 and later acquired by the public gallery, where it resides in the entryway.

Creative Expression as Activism

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