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Guests to Tate Modern are used to unusual encounters in its vast Turbine Hall. They have relaxed under an artificial sun, descended down helter skelters, and observed automated sea creatures drifting through the air. Yet this marks the initial time they will be immersing themselves in the complex nasal chambers of a reindeer. The latest creative installation for this cavernous space—created by Indigenous Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—invites patrons into a winding structure modeled after the scaled-up inside of a reindeer's nasal cavities. Once inside, they can meander around or unwind on skins, tuning in on earphones to tribal seniors telling tales and knowledge.

Why the Nose?

What's the focus on the nose? It might appear playful, but the installation celebrates a little-known natural marvel: scientists have discovered 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 creature to thrive in extreme Arctic conditions. Enlarging the nose to larger than human size, Sara notes, "generates a perception of inferiority that you as a individual are not superior over nature." Sara is a former writer, writer for kids, and environmental activist, who hails from a herding family in northern Norway. "Possibly that generates the chance to shift your outlook or trigger some humbleness," she continues.

A Celebration to Sámi Culture

The maze-like design is one of several elements in Sara's engaging commission celebrating the heritage, understanding, and beliefs of the Sámi, Europe's only Indigenous people. Partially migratory, the Sámi number roughly 100,000 people spread across the Norwegian north, the Finnish Arctic, Sweden, and Russia's Kola Peninsula (an region they call Sápmi). They have endured oppression, forced assimilation, and eradication of their tongue by all four states. With an emphasis on the reindeer, an animal at the core of the Sámi mythology and founding narrative, the installation also draws attention to the community's struggles connected to the environmental emergency, loss of territory, and external control.

Meaning in Elements

Along the long entry incline, there's a towering, eighty-five-foot structure of skins trapped by power and light cables. It represents a metaphor for the societal frameworks restricting the Sámi. Part pylon, part spiritual ascent, this part of the exhibit, called Goavve-, relates to the Sámi word for an extreme weather phenomenon, whereby dense sheets of ice appear as fluctuating temperatures liquefy and ice over the snow, trapping the reindeers' primary cold-season nourishment, fungus. The condition is a outcome of planetary warming, which is happening up to at an accelerated rate in the Far North than globally.

Three years ago, I visited Sara in a remote town during a goavvi winter and accompanied Sámi pastoralists on their Arctic vehicles in biting cold as they transported trailers of food pellets on to the exposed tundra to dispense through labor. The reindeer gathered round us, scratching the icy ground in vain attempts for mossy morsels. This costly and laborious procedure is having a drastic influence on herding practices—and on the animals' self-sufficiency. Yet the choice is starvation. As these icy periods become commonplace, reindeer are succumbing—a number from hunger, others submerging after sinking in lakes and rivers through thinning ice sheets. To some extent, the art is a monument to them. "Through the stacking of materials, in a way I'm bringing the condition to London," says Sara.

Diverging Worldviews

The installation also highlights the clear contrast between the industrial interpretation of energy as a resource to be harnessed for gain and livelihood and the Sámi worldview of energy as an natural life force in animals, humans, and land. Tate Modern's past as a coal and oil power station is tied up in this, as is what the Sámi consider green colonialism by regional governments. While attempting to be exemplars for clean sources, Nordic nations have disagreed with the Sámi over the building of windfarms, river barriers, and digging operations on their native soil; the Sámi contend their fundamental freedoms, livelihoods, and traditions are at risk. "It's challenging being such a limited population to stand your ground when the reasons are grounded in saving the world," Sara notes. "Mining practices has co-opted the discourse of sustainability, but still it's just striving to find more suitable ways to continue habits of consumption."

Personal Struggles

She and her kin have themselves clashed with the national administration over its tightening regulations on reindeer management. Previously, Sara's brother embarked on a set of ultimately unsuccessful lawsuits over the mandatory slaughter of his herd, ostensibly to stop overgrazing. To back him, Sara produced a multi-year set of pieces titled Pile O'Sápmi featuring a massive drape of numerous animal bones, which was exhibited at the the show Documenta 14 and later acquired by the public gallery, where it resides in the entrance.

Creative Expression as Activism

Among the community, creative work appears the only sphere in which they can be listened to by people of other nations. Two years ago, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|