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Visitors to Tate Modern are used to unusual encounters in its vast Turbine Hall. They've sunbathed under an simulated sun, slid down amusement rides, and witnessed robotic sea creatures hovering through the air. Yet this marks the initial time they will be engaging themselves in the intricate nasal chambers of a reindeer. The current artistic project for this cavernous space—created by Native Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—encourages gallerygoers into a labyrinthine construction inspired by the enlarged interior of a reindeer's nose passages. Inside, they can meander around or chill out on skins, tuning in on earphones to Sámi elders telling stories and knowledge.

Why the Nose?

What's the focus on the nose? It could appear playful, but the exhibit celebrates a rarely recognized biological feat: scientists have uncovered that in less than one second, the reindeer's nose can heat the ambient air it inhales by 80 degrees celsius, enabling the animal to thrive in extreme Arctic conditions. Scaling the nose to human-scale dimensions, Sara says, "generates a feeling of inferiority that you as a person are not dominant over nature." Sara is a former writer, children's author, and land defender, who comes from a reindeer-herding family in the Norwegian Arctic. "Maybe that creates the potential to alter your outlook or evoke some modesty," she states.

A Tribute to Sámi Culture

The labyrinthine installation is part of a components in Sara's absorbing art project honoring the traditions, science, and worldview of the Sámi, the sole native group in Europe. Partially migratory, the Sámi total roughly 100,000 people distributed across the Norwegian north, Finland, the Swedish Lapland, and Russia's Kola Peninsula (an area they call Sápmi). They've experienced discrimination, integration policies, and eradication of their dialect by all four countries. With an emphasis on the reindeer, an animal at the center of the Sámi belief system and origin tale, the installation also spotlights the people's challenges associated with the environmental emergency, land dispossession, and external control.

Meaning in Materials

At the extended access slope, there's a soaring, 26-metre structure of reindeer hides trapped by electrical wires. It represents a analogy for the political and economic systems limiting the Sámi. Like an electrical tower, part heavenly staircase, this part of the installation, named Goavve-, points to the Sámi name for an extreme weather phenomenon, whereby dense coatings of ice develop as varying temperatures melt and refreeze the snow, locking in the reindeers' main cold-season nourishment, fungus. Goavvi is a outcome of climate change, which is occurring up to much more rapidly in the Polar region than elsewhere.

Previously, I visited Sara in a remote town during a icy season and joined Sámi reindeer keepers on their Arctic vehicles in biting cold as they carried trailers of food pellets on to the exposed tundra to distribute by hand. The reindeer crowded round us, digging the slippery ground in vain for vegetative bits. This resource-intensive and demanding procedure is having a significant influence on reindeer husbandry—and on the animals' natural survival. However the other option is malnutrition. As goavvi winters become routine, reindeer are succumbing—a number from hunger, others submerging after plunging into water bodies through thinning ice sheets. In a sense, the art is a monument to them. "Through the stacking of elements, in a way I'm introducing the goavvi to London," says Sara.

Diverging Belief Systems

This artwork also emphasizes the clear divergence between the modern interpretation of energy as a resource to be exploited for economic benefit and livelihood and the Sámi outlook of life force as an innate essence in animals, humans, and nature. Tate Modern's past as a coal and oil power station is linked with this, as is what the Sámi consider green colonialism by Nordic countries. As they strive to be leaders for clean sources, these states have locked horns with the Sámi over the development of windfarms, hydroelectric dams, and extraction sites on their traditional territory; the Sámi contend their human rights, ways of life, and traditions are endangered. "It's very difficult being such a limited population to stand your ground when the arguments are based on global sustainability," Sara notes. "Resource exploitation has appropriated the rhetoric of ecology, but nonetheless it's just attempting to find more suitable ways to maintain patterns of consumption."

Personal Struggles

The artist and her family have personally conflicted with the Norwegian government over its increasingly stringent regulations on reindeer management. In 2016, Sara's brother embarked on a sequence of finally failed court actions over the required reduction of his herd, apparently to stop overgrazing. In support, Sara created a four-year series of creations called Pile O'Sápmi featuring a colossal screen of 400 cranial remains, which was displayed at the the art exhibition Documenta 14 and later obtained by the national institution, where it is displayed in the entrance.

Art as Awareness

Among the community, creative work is the sole sphere in which they can be heard by people of other nations. Recently, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|