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Visitors to Tate Modern are familiar to surprising displays in its expansive Turbine Hall. They've sunbathed under an artificial sun, descended down helter skelters, and seen robotic sea creatures drifting through the air. But this marks the initial time they will be engaging themselves in the complex nasal passages of a reindeer. The current artistic project for this immense space—designed by Native Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—encourages patrons into a winding design based on the expanded inside of a reindeer's nose airways. Upon entering, they can meander around or chill out on reindeer hides, listening on earphones to Sámi elders imparting narratives and knowledge.

Focus on the Nasal Passages

Why choose the nasal structure? It could sound whimsical, but the artwork honors a little-known biological feat: scientists have discovered that in a fraction of a second, the reindeer's nose can raise the temperature of the incoming air it breathes in by eighty degrees, helping the creature to survive in inhospitable Arctic temperatures. Expanding the nose to larger than human size, Sara explains, "produces a feeling of inferiority that you as a person are not superior over nature." She is a ex- reporter, writer for kids, and environmental activist, who comes from a pastoral family in the Norwegian Arctic. "Possibly that fosters the potential to change your perspective or evoke some humbleness," she adds.

A Tribute to Indigenous Heritage

The winding installation is part of a components in Sara's immersive exhibition showcasing the culture, understanding, and philosophy of the Sámi, the sole native group in Europe. Semi-nomadic, the Sámi number about 100,000 people distributed across the Norwegian north, the Finnish Arctic, Sweden, and Russia's Kola Peninsula (an area they call Sápmi). They have endured discrimination, cultural suppression, and suppression of their tongue by all four countries. By focusing on the reindeer, an animal at the heart of the Sámi mythology and origin tale, the work also spotlights the group's challenges relating to the climate crisis, loss of territory, and imperialism.

Meaning in Elements

On the long entrance ramp, there's a towering, eighty-five-foot structure of pelts ensnared by electrical wires. It can be read as a analogy for the political and economic systems limiting the Sámi. Like an electrical tower, part heavenly staircase, this section of the installation, called Goavve-, refers to the Sámi name for an harsh environmental condition, wherein dense coatings of ice form as varying weather melt and ice over the snow, locking in the reindeers' primary cold-season nourishment, lichen. Goavvi is a outcome of global heating, which is occurring up to four times faster in the Arctic than in other regions.

Previously, I met with Sara in Guovdageaidnu during a goavvi winter and went with Sámi reindeer keepers on their motorized sleds in chilly conditions as they transported trailers of animal nutrition on to the exposed frozen landscape to provide through labor. These animals crowded round us, scratching the frozen ground in vain for lichen-covered pieces. This expensive and labour-intensive process is having a severe influence on reindeer husbandry—and on the animals' natural survival. Yet the choice is death. As these icy periods become commonplace, reindeer are perishing—a number from starvation, others suffocating after falling into lakes and rivers through thinning ice sheets. To some extent, the installation is a tribute to them. "By overlapping of elements, in a way I'm introducing the condition to London," says Sara.

Opposing Perspectives

The sculpture also emphasizes the stark difference between the western interpretation of electricity as a resource to be harnessed for profit and livelihood and the Sámi worldview of life force as an inherent life force in creatures, individuals, and land. This venue's legacy as a fossil fuel plant is connected to this, as is what the Sámi consider green colonialism by Scandinavian states. While attempting to be exemplars for renewable energy, these states have disagreed with the Sámi over the construction of wind energy projects, water power facilities, and extraction sites on their native soil; the Sámi assert their human rights, livelihoods, and way of life are threatened. "It's very difficult being such a limited population to protect your rights when the justifications are rooted in global sustainability," Sara notes. "Resource exploitation has adopted the rhetoric of sustainability, but nonetheless it's just striving to find alternative ways to continue practices of consumption."

Personal Conflicts

Sara and her family have themselves disagreed with the national administration over its increasingly stringent rules on herding. A few years ago, Sara's sibling undertook a sequence of unsuccessful lawsuits over the mandatory slaughter of his livestock, apparently to stop vegetation depletion. To back him, Sara created a extended collection of creations titled Pile O'Sápmi including a huge screen of four hundred animal bones, which was displayed at the 2017 event Documenta 14 and later purchased by the National Museum of Oslo, where it hangs in the entrance.

Art as Awareness

For numerous Indigenous people, visual expression appears the only sphere in which they can be heard by outsiders. Recently, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|