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Attendees to Tate Modern are accustomed to unexpected displays in its vast Turbine Hall. They've basked under an artificial sun, slid down amusement rides, and seen AI-powered sea creatures floating through the air. Yet this marks the initial time they will be venturing themselves in the complex nose chambers of a reindeer. The current artist commission for this cavernous space—developed by Native Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—welcomes gallerygoers into a winding design modeled after the enlarged inside of a reindeer's nasal passages. Once inside, they can stroll around or chill out on reindeer hides, tuning in on earphones to community leaders telling stories and wisdom.

The Significance of the Nose

What's the focus on the nose? It could seem playful, but the artwork honors a rarely recognized natural marvel: scientists have found that in under a second, the reindeer's nose can raise the temperature of the incoming air it breathes in by eighty degrees, helping the creature to endure in inhospitable Arctic temperatures. Scaling the nose to bigger than a person, Sara says, "generates a perception of smallness that you as a individual are not dominant over nature." The artist is a ex- journalist, young adult author, and environmental activist, who comes from a reindeer-herding family in the far north of Norway. "Perhaps that creates the potential to change your perspective or evoke some modesty," she continues.

An Homage to Sámi Culture

The labyrinthine structure is part of a elements in Sara's immersive art project honoring the heritage, understanding, and philosophy of the Sámi, Europe's only Indigenous people. Semi-nomadic, the Sámi count roughly 100,000 people distributed across the Norwegian north, the Finnish Arctic, Sweden, and Russia's Kola Peninsula (an territory they call Sápmi). They've faced oppression, forced assimilation, and suppression of their dialect by all four nations. Through highlighting the reindeer, an creature at the heart of the Sámi mythology and creation story, the art also spotlights the people's issues associated with the climate crisis, loss of territory, and colonialism.

Metaphor in Components

On the extended access ramp, there's a looming, eighty-five-foot formation of reindeer hides ensnared by electrical wires. It serves as a metaphor for the societal frameworks limiting the Sámi. Part pylon, part spiritual ascent, this part of the installation, named Goavve-, refers to the Sámi name for an extreme weather phenomenon, whereby solid sheets of ice appear as changing conditions melt and solidify again the snow, encasing the reindeers' key cold-season nourishment, moss. The condition is a consequence of planetary warming, which is taking place up to at an accelerated rate in the Arctic than elsewhere.

Three years ago, I traveled to see Sara in Guovdageaidnu during a icy season and joined Sámi pastoralists on their motorized sleds in chilly conditions as they carried trailers of animal nutrition on to the exposed tundra to distribute through labor. These animals crowded round us, pawing the icy ground in futility for lichen-covered bits. This expensive and demanding method is having a drastic influence on reindeer husbandry—and on the animals' self-sufficiency. Yet the other option is death. When such conditions become routine, reindeer are perishing—a number from hunger, others drowning after sinking in lakes and rivers through unstable frozen surfaces. To some extent, the work is a tribute to them. "With the layering of materials, in a way I'm transporting the goavvi to London," says Sara.

Diverging Worldviews

This artwork also emphasizes the clear divergence between the western interpretation of energy as a commodity to be exploited for profit and survival and the Sámi outlook of energy as an inherent essence in creatures, people, and nature. Tate Modern's legacy as a fossil fuel plant is connected to this, as is what the Sámi see as green colonialism by regional governments. While attempting to be standard bearers for clean sources, these states have clashed with the Sámi over the building of wind energy projects, river barriers, and mines on their native soil; the Sámi contend their human rights, livelihoods, and culture are at risk. "It's very difficult being such a tiny group to protect your rights when the arguments are rooted in global sustainability," Sara observes. "Extractivism has adopted the rhetoric of ecology, but nonetheless it's just striving to find more suitable ways to persist in patterns of consumption."

Individual Challenges

Sara and her family have personally clashed with the national administration over its tightening rules on herding. In 2016, Sara's sibling embarked on a sequence of ultimately unsuccessful legal cases over the required reduction of his livestock, apparently to stop vegetation depletion. As a show of solidarity, Sara produced a extended series of artworks called Pile O'Sápmi featuring a colossal drape of 400 reindeer skulls, which was shown at the the event Documenta 14 and later acquired by the national institution, where it is displayed in the entryway.

Art as Activism

For many Sámi, creative work is the exclusive realm in which they can be listened to by the global community. Recently, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|