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Guests to Tate Modern are accustomed to unusual encounters in its expansive Turbine Hall. They've sunbathed under an man-made sun, slid down spiral slides, and observed automated jellyfish floating through the air. However this marks the first time they will be immersing themselves in the intricate nasal cavities of a reindeer. The latest artistic project for this immense space—developed by Indigenous Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—welcomes visitors into a maze-like construction based on the expanded interior of a reindeer's nasal airways. Once inside, they can stroll around or unwind on pelts, tuning in on headphones to community leaders telling stories and insights.

Why the Nose?

Why the nose? It might sound whimsical, but the exhibit honors a obscure natural marvel: scientists have discovered that in under a second, the reindeer's nose can warm the ambient air it inhales by 80°C, enabling the creature to endure in harsh Arctic temperatures. Enlarging the nose to larger than human size, Sara notes, "generates a feeling of inferiority that you as a person are not dominant over nature." The artist is a ex- journalist, young adult author, and land defender, who comes from a reindeer-herding family in the Norwegian Arctic. "Maybe that fosters the possibility to change your viewpoint or spark some humility," she adds.

A Celebration to Traditional Ways

The maze-like design is part of a components in Sara's immersive exhibition honoring the traditions, science, and beliefs of the Sámi, Europe's only Indigenous people. Partially migratory, the Sámi total about 100,000 people ranged across the Norwegian north, the Finnish Arctic, Sweden, and the Russian Arctic (an territory they call Sápmi). They've faced discrimination, integration policies, and eradication of their language by all four countries. Through highlighting the reindeer, an animal at the center of the Sámi belief system and creation story, the art also draws attention to the people's issues relating to the global warming, loss of territory, and colonialism.

Metaphor in Materials

Along the extended access ramp, there's a looming, eighty-five-foot formation of skins entangled by utility lines. It serves as a analogy for the societal frameworks limiting the Sámi. Partly a utility pole, part celestial ladder, this component of the exhibit, named Goavve-, refers to the Sámi word for an extreme weather phenomenon, whereby dense layers of ice form as fluctuating weather melt and refreeze the snow, encasing the reindeers' primary cold-season food, lichen. This phenomenon is a consequence of climate change, which is happening up to much more rapidly in the Polar region than in other regions.

Three years ago, I met with Sara in Guovdageaidnu during a icy season and went with Sámi pastoralists on their Arctic vehicles in freezing temperatures as they hauled carts of supplementary feed on to the wind-scoured Arctic plains to provide by hand. The herd crowded round us, scratching the frozen ground in vain for mossy pieces. This expensive and laborious process is having a drastic impact on animal rearing—and on the animals' self-sufficiency. However the other option is malnutrition. When such conditions become frequent, reindeer are dying—a number from hunger, others suffocating after falling into streams through prematurely melting ice. In a sense, the art is a monument to them. "By overlapping of materials, in a way I'm bringing the phenomenon to London," says Sara.

Opposing Belief Systems

The sculpture also underscores the clear divergence between the western view of power as a asset to be harnessed for gain and existence and the Sámi worldview of life force as an inherent power in creatures, individuals, and the environment. This venue's legacy as a coal and oil power station is connected to this, as is what the Sámi view as environmental exploitation by Scandinavian states. While attempting to be exemplars for sustainable power, these states have disagreed with the Sámi over the construction of turbine fields, river barriers, and extraction sites on their ancestral land; the Sámi argue their fundamental freedoms, ways of life, and culture are endangered. "It's challenging being such a limited population to defend yourself when the reasons are based on global sustainability," Sara comments. "Mining practices has co-opted the discourse of sustainability, but nonetheless it's just attempting to find more suitable ways to continue practices of use."

Personal Challenges

Sara and her family have themselves disagreed with the national administration over its ever-stricter policies on herding. In 2016, Sara's brother undertook a set of ultimately unsuccessful lawsuits over the mandatory slaughter of his herd, supposedly to stop excessive feeding. To back him, Sara developed a four-year series of artworks named Pile O'Sápmi comprising a colossal curtain of four hundred animal bones, which was displayed at the 2017's show Documenta 14 and later obtained by the national institution, where it is displayed in the entryway.

Creative Expression as Advocacy

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