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Guests to Tate Modern are accustomed to surprising experiences in its spacious Turbine Hall. They've relaxed under an man-made sun, descended down amusement rides, and witnessed automated sea creatures floating through the air. However this marks the initial time they will be engaging themselves in the complex nose passages of a reindeer. The latest artistic project for this cavernous space—created by Native Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—encourages gallerygoers into a labyrinthine structure based on the scaled-up interior of a reindeer's nasal passages. Upon entering, they can stroll around or relax on skins, tuning in on headphones to Sámi elders imparting narratives and knowledge.

Focus on the Nasal Passages

Why choose the nasal structure? It might appear playful, but the artwork honors a little-known biological feat: researchers have uncovered that in a fraction of a second, the reindeer's nose can warm the incoming air it breathes in by 80 degrees celsius, helping the creature to endure in inhospitable Arctic conditions. Expanding the nose to larger than human size, Sara says, "produces a sense of smallness that you as a person are not in control over nature." Sara is a former reporter, writer for kids, and environmental activist, who comes from a pastoral family in the Norwegian Arctic. "Maybe that generates the potential to shift your viewpoint or evoke some humility," she states.

A Tribute to Traditional Ways

The labyrinthine design is one of several features in Sara's immersive art project honoring the culture, science, and beliefs of the Sámi, Europe's only Indigenous people. Traditionally mobile, the Sámi total approximately 100,000 people spread across northern Norway, the Finnish Arctic, Sweden, and Russia's Kola Peninsula (an territory they call Sápmi). They have endured persecution, integration policies, and eradication of their dialect by all four nations. Through highlighting the reindeer, an creature at the heart of the Sámi cosmology and creation story, the installation also highlights the people's struggles associated with the climate crisis, land dispossession, and imperialism.

Symbolism in Elements

On the extended entry ramp, there's a soaring, eighty-five-foot formation of pelts entangled by power and light cables. It can be read as a metaphor for the societal frameworks constraining the Sámi. Like an electrical tower, part heavenly staircase, this component of the artwork, called Goavve-, relates to the Sámi word for an extreme weather phenomenon, whereby dense coatings of ice appear as changing conditions thaw and solidify again the snow, encasing the reindeers' key cold-season nourishment, moss. The condition is a outcome of planetary warming, which is happening up to much more rapidly in the Arctic than elsewhere.

A few years back, I visited Sara in the Norwegian far north during a icy season and went with Sámi reindeer keepers on their Arctic vehicles in freezing temperatures as they transported containers of supplementary feed on to the exposed frozen landscape to provide by hand. The reindeer gathered round us, digging the icy ground in vain attempts for lichen-covered morsels. This resource-intensive and laborious process is having a severe impact on reindeer husbandry—and on the animals' independence. But the choice is starvation. As these icy periods become routine, reindeer are perishing—some from hunger, others suffocating after plunging into lakes and rivers through prematurely melting ice. In a sense, the art is a tribute to them. "With the layering of components, in a way I'm bringing the goavvi to London," says Sara.

Contrasting Belief Systems

This artwork also emphasizes the stark difference between the western understanding of energy as a resource to be harnessed for profit and existence and the Sámi philosophy of life force as an inherent life force in creatures, individuals, and nature. This venue's legacy as a coal and oil power station is linked with this, as is what the Sámi see as green colonialism by Scandinavian states. As they strive to be exemplars for renewable energy, Scandinavian countries have clashed with the Sámi over the construction of wind energy projects, river barriers, and mines on their native soil; the Sámi contend their human rights, incomes, and culture are endangered. "It's hard being such a small minority to defend yourself when the reasons are rooted in environmental protection," Sara comments. "Resource exploitation has co-opted the language of sustainability, but still it's just attempting to find alternative ways to persist in practices of consumption."

Individual Conflicts

Sara and her family have personally clashed with the state authorities over its ever-stricter regulations on herding. In 2016, Sara's brother embarked on a set of unsuccessful lawsuits over the mandatory slaughter of his herd, apparently to stop overgrazing. To back him, Sara created a multi-year set of artworks named Pile O'Sápmi featuring a massive curtain of four hundred cranial remains, which was shown at the 2017 event Documenta 14 and later acquired by the National Museum of Oslo, where it resides in the lobby.

The Role of Art in Awareness

Among the community, art seems the exclusive domain in which they can be understood by people of other nations. Two years ago, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|