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Attendees to Tate Modern are used to unusual experiences in its vast Turbine Hall. They have basked under an simulated sun, slid down helter skelters, and observed robotic sea creatures hovering through the air. But this marks the inaugural time they will be engaging themselves in the intricate nasal cavities of a reindeer. The current artistic project for this huge space—created by Native Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—encourages visitors into a maze-like structure based on the scaled-up inside of a reindeer's nose airways. Inside, they can meander around or chill out on skins, listening on earphones to Sámi elders telling narratives and knowledge.

Why the Nose?

Why choose the nasal structure? It could seem whimsical, but the artwork pays tribute to a little-known scientific wonder: researchers have uncovered that in a fraction of a second, the reindeer's nose can raise the temperature of the ambient air it inhales by 80 degrees celsius, helping the animal to endure in extreme Arctic conditions. Enlarging the nose to larger than human size, Sara says, "creates a sense of inferiority that you as a person are not in control over nature." She is a ex- reporter, young adult author, and land defender, who is from a reindeer-herding family in the far north of Norway. "Maybe that generates the possibility to change your outlook or spark some humility," she states.

An Homage to Sámi Culture

The labyrinthine structure is among various elements in Sara's engaging commission honoring the culture, knowledge, and philosophy of the Sámi, the sole native group in Europe. Partially migratory, the Sámi count roughly 100,000 people ranged across northern Norway, Finland, Sweden, and the Russian Arctic (an region they call Sápmi). They have experienced oppression, integration policies, and suppression of their language by all four countries. By focusing on the reindeer, an creature at the heart of the Sámi belief system and origin tale, the work also draws attention to the people's struggles connected to the environmental emergency, property rights, and imperialism.

Metaphor in Elements

Along the lengthy entry incline, there's a looming, 26-metre structure of reindeer hides entangled by electrical wires. It serves as a analogy for the societal frameworks constraining the Sámi. Partly a utility pole, part spiritual ascent, this section of the installation, named Goavve-, refers to the Sámi word for an harsh environmental condition, wherein thick coatings of ice form as varying weather melt and ice over the snow, encasing the reindeers' main winter sustenance, fungus. Goavvi is a result of planetary warming, which is taking place up to much more rapidly in the Polar region than in other regions.

A few years back, I met with Sara in the Norwegian far north during a goavvi winter and joined Sámi herders on their motorized sleds in freezing temperatures as they hauled carts of animal nutrition on to the wind-scoured tundra to provide manually. The herd crowded round us, pawing the icy ground in futility for mossy morsels. This costly and demanding process is having a significant effect on animal rearing—and on the animals' independence. However the alternative is death. When such conditions become frequent, reindeer are perishing—some from lack of food, others drowning after falling into lakes and rivers through prematurely melting ice. On one level, the art is a tribute to them. "By overlapping of elements, in a way I'm bringing the condition to London," says Sara.

Opposing Worldviews

This artwork also highlights the clear divergence between the western view of energy as a asset to be harnessed for profit and livelihood and the Sámi philosophy of energy as an inherent life force in animals, individuals, and the environment. Tate Modern's history as a coal and oil power station is tied up in this, as is what the Sámi see as green colonialism by Nordic countries. As they strive to be exemplars for clean sources, Nordic nations have clashed with the Sámi over the building of windfarms, river barriers, and extraction sites on their native soil; the Sámi argue their legal protections, livelihoods, and traditions are at risk. "It's very difficult being such a small minority to defend yourself when the reasons are rooted in global sustainability," Sara notes. "Extractivism has co-opted the language of ecology, but yet it's just aiming to find better ways to maintain practices of consumption."

Individual Challenges

Sara and her relatives have personally clashed with the national administration over its increasingly stringent regulations on reindeer management. Previously, Sara's sibling undertook a series of unsuccessful legal cases over the forced culling of his herd, apparently to stop excessive feeding. As a show of solidarity, Sara developed a multi-year collection of artworks called Pile O'Sápmi featuring a massive curtain of four hundred cranial remains, which was shown at the 2017 event Documenta 14 and later purchased by the public gallery, where it is displayed in the lobby.

Art as Awareness

For many Sámi, creative work seems the sole domain in which they can be heard by the global community. Two years ago, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|