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Attendees to Tate Modern are used to unexpected displays in its spacious Turbine Hall. They have relaxed under an simulated sun, slid down helter skelters, and observed robotic sea creatures floating through the air. However this marks the first time they will be engaging themselves in the detailed nasal passages of a reindeer. The newest artistic project for this immense space—designed by Native Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—encourages gallerygoers into a maze-like construction modeled after the expanded inside of a reindeer's nose cavities. Inside, they can stroll around or chill out on pelts, listening on earphones to community leaders telling narratives and knowledge.

Focus on the Nasal Passages

Why choose the nasal structure? It could seem playful, but the exhibit pays tribute to a rarely recognized natural marvel: researchers have discovered that in a fraction of a second, the reindeer's nose can raise the temperature of the incoming air it inhales by eighty degrees, helping the creature to survive in harsh Arctic conditions. Enlarging the nose to larger than human size, Sara explains, "generates a perception of smallness that you as a human being are not in control over nature." Sara is a former journalist, writer for kids, and rights advocate, who is from a pastoral family in northern Norway. "Perhaps that fosters the possibility to change your outlook or spark some humbleness," she continues.

An Homage to Traditional Ways

The maze-like structure is part of a elements in Sara's engaging exhibition honoring the culture, knowledge, and philosophy of the Sámi, Europe's only Indigenous people. Traditionally mobile, the Sámi count approximately 100,000 people ranged across the Norwegian north, the Finnish Arctic, the Swedish Lapland, and the Kola region (an territory they call Sápmi). They have experienced oppression, forced assimilation, and eradication of their tongue by all four countries. With an emphasis on the reindeer, an animal at the center of the Sámi mythology and creation story, the art also draws attention to the group's struggles associated with the global warming, loss of territory, and external control.

Metaphor in Elements

Along the long access ramp, there's a looming, eighty-five-foot structure of reindeer hides ensnared by power and light cables. It can be read as a metaphor for the political and economic systems restricting the Sámi. Part pylon, part heavenly staircase, this part of the exhibit, titled Goavve-, relates to the Sámi term for an harsh environmental condition, in which solid coatings of ice appear as changing conditions melt and refreeze the snow, encasing the reindeers' primary winter nourishment, fungus. This phenomenon is a outcome of climate change, which is occurring up to at an accelerated rate in the Polar region than globally.

Three years ago, I traveled to see Sara in Guovdageaidnu during a goavvi winter and went with Sámi reindeer keepers on their motorized sleds in freezing temperatures as they transported carts of supplementary feed on to the exposed tundra to distribute through labor. These animals gathered round us, digging the frozen ground in vain attempts for mossy bits. This resource-intensive and labour-intensive procedure is having a severe influence on reindeer husbandry—and on the animals' natural survival. However the other option is death. As goavvi winters become routine, reindeer are perishing—a number from lack of food, others suffocating after sinking in lakes and rivers through unstable frozen surfaces. To some extent, the art is a memorial to them. "Through the stacking of elements, in a way I'm introducing the phenomenon to London," says Sara.

Opposing Worldviews

The installation also underscores the sharp contrast between the modern interpretation of energy as a asset to be exploited for gain and survival and the Sámi worldview of energy as an inherent essence in animals, humans, and the environment. This venue's legacy as a coal and oil power station is tied up in this, as is what the Sámi consider environmental exploitation by Scandinavian states. In their efforts to be exemplars for sustainable power, these states have locked horns with the Sámi over the development of wind energy projects, water power facilities, and digging operations on their ancestral land; the Sámi assert their legal protections, ways of life, and way of life are endangered. "It's challenging being such a tiny group to defend yourself when the justifications are rooted in global sustainability," Sara comments. "Mining practices has adopted the rhetoric of sustainability, but still it's just aiming to find alternative ways to maintain habits of use."

Individual Conflicts

She and her relatives have personally disagreed with the national administration over its increasingly stringent policies on animal husbandry. Previously, Sara's sibling initiated a set of finally failed court actions over the forced culling of his herd, ostensibly to stop vegetation depletion. To back him, Sara produced a four-year series of artworks named Pile O'Sápmi including a huge curtain of numerous cranial remains, which was shown at the the art exhibition Documenta 14 and later purchased by the public gallery, where it is displayed in the lobby.

Art as Activism

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