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Attendees to Tate Modern are familiar to unexpected displays in its expansive Turbine Hall. They've basked under an artificial sun, slid down spiral slides, and observed robotic jellyfish hovering through the air. But this marks the initial time they will be venturing themselves in the detailed nasal chambers of a reindeer. The latest artistic project for this immense space—developed by Native Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—encourages patrons into a labyrinthine structure based on the scaled-up inside of a reindeer's nose cavities. Inside, they can wander around or relax on reindeer hides, listening on earphones to Sámi elders sharing narratives and wisdom.

The Significance of the Nose

Why choose the nasal structure? It may sound playful, but the exhibit honors a obscure scientific wonder: experts have discovered that in less than one second, the reindeer's nose can raise the temperature of the ambient air it takes in by 80°C, enabling the creature to thrive in inhospitable Arctic temperatures. Scaling the nose to human-scale dimensions, Sara says, "creates a sense of insignificance that you as a person are not in control over nature." Sara is a ex- journalist, writer for kids, and land defender, who is from a pastoral family in the far north of Norway. "Maybe that fosters the potential to shift your outlook or evoke some humility," she adds.

A Tribute to Indigenous Heritage

The labyrinthine design is among various elements in Sara's absorbing commission celebrating the heritage, science, and worldview of the Sámi, the sole native group in Europe. Partially migratory, the Sámi total about 100,000 people ranged across the Norwegian north, Finland, Sweden, and the Russian Arctic (an area they call Sápmi). They've endured oppression, cultural suppression, and eradication of their dialect by all four states. By focusing on the reindeer, an creature at the center of the Sámi mythology and origin tale, the art also draws attention to the group's issues relating to the environmental emergency, land dispossession, and colonialism.

Metaphor in Elements

Along the long entry ramp, there's a soaring, 26-metre sculpture of skins trapped by power and light cables. It serves as a metaphor for the governance and financial structures limiting the Sámi. Like an electrical tower, part celestial ladder, this part of the artwork, named Goavve-, refers to the Sámi term for an extreme weather phenomenon, whereby solid coatings of ice form as changing conditions liquefy and solidify again the snow, encasing the reindeers' primary winter sustenance, lichen. The condition is a consequence of planetary warming, which is happening up to much more rapidly in the Far North than globally.

Previously, I met with Sara in the Norwegian far north during a icy season and accompanied Sámi pastoralists on their motorized sleds in biting cold as they transported containers of food pellets on to the wind-scoured Arctic plains to dispense by hand. These animals crowded round us, pawing the frozen ground in vain attempts for vegetative morsels. This costly and laborious process is having a drastic influence on animal rearing—and on the animals' independence. Yet the choice is malnutrition. As these icy periods become commonplace, reindeer are perishing—some from lack of food, others submerging after sinking in streams through unstable frozen surfaces. To some extent, the installation is a monument to them. "Through the stacking of elements, in a way I'm transporting the phenomenon to London," says Sara.

Contrasting Worldviews

This artwork also highlights the clear difference between the western interpretation of power as a commodity to be exploited for profit and survival and the Sámi philosophy of life force as an inherent power in creatures, individuals, and nature. Tate Modern's past as a industrial facility is connected to this, as is what the Sámi view as eco-imperialism by regional governments. In their efforts to be exemplars for renewable energy, Nordic nations have locked horns with the Sámi over the building of windfarms, water power facilities, and extraction sites on their traditional territory; the Sámi assert their fundamental freedoms, ways of life, and way of life are endangered. "It's hard being such a tiny group to protect your rights when the reasons are grounded in environmental protection," Sara observes. "Resource exploitation has co-opted the discourse of sustainability, but yet it's just striving to find better ways to maintain patterns of expenditure."

Personal Conflicts

The artist and her relatives have personally clashed with the national administration over its ever-stricter policies on herding. Previously, Sara's sibling initiated a set of ultimately unsuccessful lawsuits over the required reduction of his livestock, ostensibly to stop excessive feeding. To back him, Sara developed a multi-year set of artworks titled Pile O'Sápmi including a massive drape of 400 cranial remains, which was displayed at the 2017's show Documenta 14 and later obtained by the National Museum of Oslo, where it hangs in the entrance.

Creative Expression as Awareness

For many Sámi, visual expression seems the only domain in which they can be heard by outsiders. Recently, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|