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Attendees to Tate Modern are accustomed to unusual displays in its expansive Turbine Hall. They have sunbathed under an artificial sun, slid down spiral slides, and observed automated jellyfish hovering through the air. Yet this marks the initial time they will be immersing themselves in the intricate nose chambers of a reindeer. The latest artist commission for this immense space—created by Indigenous Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—invites patrons into a labyrinthine construction based on the expanded inside of a reindeer's nasal airways. Inside, they can wander around or relax on reindeer hides, listening on earphones to tribal seniors imparting tales and insights.

The Significance of the Nose

Why the nose? It may appear quirky, but the exhibit honors a obscure scientific wonder: scientists have discovered that in a fraction of a second, the reindeer's nose can raise the temperature of the ambient air it takes in by eighty degrees, helping the creature to endure in extreme Arctic climates. Enlarging the nose to larger than human size, Sara says, "produces a feeling of smallness that you as a person are not superior over nature." She is a ex- writer, young adult author, and environmental activist, who is from a pastoral family in the Norwegian Arctic. "Perhaps that fosters the potential to change your viewpoint or evoke some modesty," she adds.

A Celebration to Traditional Ways

The labyrinthine installation is among various features in Sara's immersive commission celebrating the culture, knowledge, and beliefs of the Sámi, the continent's original inhabitants. Traditionally mobile, the Sámi count approximately 100,000 people spread across northern Norway, Finland, Sweden, and Russia's Kola Peninsula (an region they call Sápmi). They've endured oppression, cultural suppression, and suppression of their tongue by all four nations. Through highlighting the reindeer, an creature at the core of the Sámi cosmology and creation story, the installation also draws attention to the people's issues relating to the climate crisis, land dispossession, and imperialism.

Meaning in Materials

Along the long access slope, there's a looming, 26-meter sculpture of skins trapped by utility lines. It can be read as a analogy for the political and economic systems limiting the Sámi. Like an electrical tower, part spiritual ascent, this component of the exhibit, called Goavve-, relates to the Sámi name for an harsh environmental condition, in which solid coatings of ice appear as fluctuating temperatures thaw and ice over the snow, encasing the reindeers' key cold-season food, lichen. Goavvi is a result of climate change, which is happening up to at an accelerated rate in the Polar region than elsewhere.

Previously, I met with Sara in Guovdageaidnu during a icy season and went with Sámi reindeer keepers on their snowmobiles in freezing temperatures as they hauled carts of animal nutrition on to the wind-scoured frozen landscape to dispense by hand. The herd crowded round us, pawing the slippery ground in futility for lichen-covered morsels. This expensive and labour-intensive process is having a severe influence on herding practices—and on the animals' self-sufficiency. But the other option is malnutrition. As these icy periods become commonplace, reindeer are dying—a number from starvation, others suffocating after plunging into streams through prematurely melting ice. To some extent, the art is a monument to them. "With the layering of elements, in a way I'm introducing the condition to London," says Sara.

Opposing Belief Systems

The sculpture also emphasizes the stark difference between the western view of power as a commodity to be exploited for profit and existence and the Sámi outlook of energy as an innate power in animals, people, and nature. This venue's past as a fossil fuel plant is connected to this, as is what the Sámi consider eco-imperialism by regional governments. While attempting to be standard bearers for renewable energy, Scandinavian countries have locked horns with the Sámi over the building of turbine fields, river barriers, and mines on their traditional territory; the Sámi argue their legal protections, incomes, and way of life are at risk. "It's very difficult being such a small minority to defend yourself when the arguments are based on environmental protection," Sara observes. "Resource exploitation has adopted the rhetoric of sustainability, but nonetheless it's just attempting to find alternative ways to persist in patterns of use."

Individual Challenges

The artist and her family have themselves conflicted with the national administration over its tightening policies on reindeer management. A few years ago, Sara's sibling embarked on a series of ultimately unsuccessful lawsuits over the forced culling of his animals, apparently to stop overgrazing. To back him, Sara created a four-year set of pieces called Pile O'Sápmi including a massive screen of four hundred cranial remains, which was shown at the 2017's event Documenta 14 and later obtained by the public gallery, where it hangs in the entryway.

Art as Activism

Among the community, visual expression seems the only realm in which they can be understood by outsiders. Two years ago, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|