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Visitors to Tate Modern are accustomed to unusual displays in its expansive Turbine Hall. They have sunbathed under an simulated sun, glided down spiral slides, and observed robotic sea creatures drifting through the air. Yet this marks the first time they will be venturing themselves in the intricate nose passages of a reindeer. The newest creative installation for this cavernous space—developed by Indigenous Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—welcomes visitors into a labyrinthine structure modeled after the scaled-up inside of a reindeer's nasal passages. Inside, they can meander around or relax on skins, listening on headphones to Sámi elders sharing stories and wisdom.

Focus on the Nasal Passages

Why the nose? It may sound whimsical, but the artwork honors a obscure scientific wonder: researchers have uncovered that in less than one second, the reindeer's nose can heat the ambient air it inhales by 80°C, enabling the creature to endure in harsh Arctic climates. Scaling the nose to bigger than a person, Sara explains, "generates a perception of insignificance that you as a person are not superior over nature." She is a ex- writer, children's author, and land defender, who comes from a pastoral family in the far north of Norway. "Possibly that creates the potential to change your outlook or evoke some humility," she adds.

A Tribute to Indigenous Heritage

The maze-like design is one of several features in Sara's engaging art project honoring the heritage, science, and philosophy of the Sámi, the continent's original inhabitants. Semi-nomadic, the Sámi total roughly 100,000 people spread across northern Norway, the Finnish Arctic, the Swedish Lapland, and the Russian Arctic (an region they call Sápmi). They've faced persecution, cultural suppression, and eradication of their language by all four states. By focusing on the reindeer, an animal at the heart of the Sámi mythology and origin tale, the installation also spotlights the group's issues relating to the global warming, loss of territory, and imperialism.

Meaning in Components

At the extended access incline, there's a looming, 26-metre formation of skins trapped by electrical wires. It can be read as a symbol for the political and economic systems restricting the Sámi. Partly a utility pole, part celestial ladder, this section of the artwork, called Goavve-, relates to the Sámi name for an severe climatic event, wherein dense sheets of ice appear as varying weather melt and refreeze the snow, trapping the reindeers' main winter food, lichen. The condition is a outcome of climate change, which is taking place up to four times faster in the Far North than globally.

Previously, I met with Sara in a remote town during a goavvi winter and went with Sámi herders on their motorized sleds in chilly conditions as they hauled containers of supplementary feed on to the exposed tundra to distribute through labor. These animals surrounded round us, scratching the icy ground in vain for mossy morsels. This expensive and demanding method is having a drastic effect on reindeer husbandry—and on the animals' self-sufficiency. But the other option is starvation. When such conditions become commonplace, reindeer are succumbing—some from starvation, others suffocating after plunging into lakes and rivers through thinning ice sheets. In a sense, the work is a tribute to them. "Through the stacking of materials, in a way I'm introducing the phenomenon to London," says Sara.

Diverging Belief Systems

The installation also emphasizes the clear difference between the modern understanding of electricity as a resource to be utilized for gain and survival and the Sámi outlook of life force as an inherent life force in creatures, humans, and land. The gallery's legacy as a coal and oil power station 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 clashed with the Sámi over the construction of wind energy projects, water power facilities, and extraction sites on their native soil; the Sámi assert their legal protections, ways of life, and culture are endangered. "It's very difficult being such a small minority to defend yourself when the reasons are grounded in saving the world," Sara comments. "Mining practices has appropriated the language of ecology, but yet it's just attempting to find better ways to persist in patterns of use."

Individual Conflicts

The artist and her kin have themselves clashed with the Norwegian government over its ever-stricter policies on herding. Previously, Sara's sibling embarked on a set of ultimately unsuccessful lawsuits over the required reduction of his herd, supposedly to stop overgrazing. As a show of solidarity, Sara developed a four-year series of artworks named Pile O'Sápmi featuring a colossal curtain of 400 cranial remains, which was exhibited at the the show Documenta 14 and later purchased by the National Museum of Oslo, where it resides in the lobby.

Creative Expression as Awareness

Among the community, visual expression is the sole domain in which they can be understood by the global community. Two years ago, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|