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Guests to Tate Modern are familiar to unusual experiences in its spacious Turbine Hall. They've basked under an man-made sun, slid down spiral slides, and witnessed robotic sea creatures floating through the air. However this marks the inaugural time they will be venturing themselves in the detailed nasal chambers of a reindeer. The newest artist commission for this cavernous space—created by Native Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—encourages gallerygoers into a winding structure inspired by the scaled-up inside of a reindeer's nasal cavities. Inside, they can wander around or relax on pelts, tuning in on headphones to tribal seniors sharing stories and wisdom.

Focus on the Nasal Passages

What's the focus on the nose? It could appear playful, but the exhibit celebrates a little-known natural marvel: experts have uncovered that in under a second, the reindeer's nose can heat the incoming air it inhales by eighty degrees, helping the creature to survive in harsh Arctic climates. Expanding the nose to human-scale dimensions, Sara explains, "produces a sense of inferiority that you as a human being are not superior over nature." Sara is a ex- reporter, children's author, and rights advocate, who is from a reindeer-herding family in the far north of Norway. "Possibly that generates the potential to change your viewpoint or spark some modesty," she continues.

An Homage to Indigenous Heritage

The maze-like installation is one of several components in Sara's engaging exhibition honoring the heritage, knowledge, and beliefs of the Sámi, the continent's original inhabitants. Traditionally mobile, the Sámi count about 100,000 people ranged across northern Norway, Finland, the Swedish Lapland, and the Russian Arctic (an region they call Sápmi). They have experienced discrimination, forced assimilation, and suppression of their tongue by all four states. With an emphasis on the reindeer, an creature at the heart of the Sámi cosmology and origin tale, the art also highlights the people's struggles connected to the environmental emergency, property rights, and imperialism.

Metaphor in Materials

Along the extended entrance incline, there's a looming, 26-meter formation of reindeer hides trapped by electrical wires. It serves as a analogy for the societal frameworks restricting the Sámi. Part pylon, part celestial ladder, this component of the artwork, named Goavve-, points to the Sámi name for an severe climatic event, wherein dense sheets of ice form as varying conditions thaw and refreeze the snow, trapping the reindeers' primary cold-season food, fungus. The condition is a result of global heating, which is occurring up to at an accelerated rate in the Polar region than globally.

Previously, I visited Sara in Guovdageaidnu during a goavvi winter and joined Sámi pastoralists on their snowmobiles in freezing temperatures as they transported trailers of food pellets on to the exposed frozen landscape to provide manually. The herd surrounded round us, digging the slippery ground in vain for lichen-covered morsels. This resource-intensive and labour-intensive process is having a significant influence on herding practices—and on the animals' independence. However the choice is starvation. When such conditions become routine, reindeer are succumbing—some from lack of food, others submerging after falling into streams through prematurely melting ice. On one level, the art is a monument to them. "Through the stacking of elements, in a way I'm introducing the goavvi to London," says Sara.

Contrasting Perspectives

The sculpture also underscores the sharp difference between the industrial interpretation of electricity as a asset to be harnessed for profit and existence and the Sámi worldview of vitality as an inherent power in animals, humans, and land. The gallery's past as a coal and oil power station is connected to this, as is what the Sámi view as green colonialism by Nordic countries. As they strive to be standard bearers for clean sources, these states have disagreed with the Sámi over the construction of turbine fields, hydroelectric dams, and digging operations on their native soil; the Sámi contend their fundamental freedoms, ways of life, and culture are at risk. "It's very difficult being such a small minority to defend yourself when the reasons are grounded in environmental protection," Sara observes. "Mining practices has co-opted the rhetoric of environmentalism, but yet it's just attempting to find alternative ways to maintain habits of use."

Family Struggles

The artist and her relatives have personally conflicted with the national administration over its ever-stricter rules on reindeer management. A few years ago, Sara's sibling undertook a set of unsuccessful court actions over the forced culling of his herd, supposedly to stop vegetation depletion. As a show of solidarity, Sara created a multi-year series of artworks named Pile O'Sápmi featuring a massive curtain of 400 reindeer skulls, which was exhibited at the the event Documenta 14 and later obtained by the public gallery, where it resides in the lobby.

The Role of Art in Activism

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