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Guests to Tate Modern are accustomed to surprising encounters in its expansive Turbine Hall. They have sunbathed under an simulated sun, descended down amusement rides, and witnessed automated sea creatures floating through the air. Yet this marks the first time they will be engaging themselves in the complex nasal passages of a reindeer. The current artist commission for this huge space—developed by Native Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—encourages gallerygoers into a labyrinthine structure modeled after the enlarged interior of a reindeer's nose airways. Inside, they can meander around or relax on pelts, listening on earphones to Sámi elders imparting stories and insights.

Why the Nose?

Why choose the nasal structure? It might appear playful, but the installation honors a rarely recognized scientific wonder: scientists have uncovered that in less than one second, the reindeer's nose can warm the incoming air it breathes in by eighty degrees, helping the creature to thrive in extreme Arctic temperatures. Expanding the nose to human-scale dimensions, Sara notes, "produces a sense of inferiority that you as a person are not dominant over nature." The artist is a ex- writer, children's author, and land defender, who comes from a reindeer-herding family in the Norwegian Arctic. "Possibly that generates the potential to alter your viewpoint or trigger some modesty," she adds.

A Tribute to Traditional Ways

The labyrinthine structure is one of several elements in Sara's absorbing exhibition celebrating the culture, knowledge, and philosophy of the Sámi, Europe's only Indigenous people. Partially migratory, the Sámi number about 100,000 people spread across northern Norway, the Finnish Arctic, the Swedish Lapland, and the Russian Arctic (an area they call Sápmi). They've endured discrimination, integration policies, and eradication of their dialect by all four nations. By focusing on the reindeer, an animal at the core of the Sámi belief system and creation story, the installation also draws attention to the people's issues associated with the climate crisis, property rights, and external control.

Metaphor in Elements

Along the long access slope, there's a soaring, 26-metre sculpture of pelts ensnared by power and light cables. It serves as a symbol for the governance and financial structures limiting the Sámi. Partly a utility pole, part spiritual ascent, this part of the exhibit, called Goavve-, points to the Sámi term for an harsh environmental condition, wherein dense layers of ice develop as varying temperatures liquefy and solidify again the snow, trapping the reindeers' key winter sustenance, fungus. Goavvi is a result of climate change, which is occurring up to much more rapidly in the Arctic than globally.

Three years ago, I met with Sara in the Norwegian far north during a icy season and joined Sámi reindeer keepers on their motorized sleds in freezing temperatures as they transported containers of food pellets on to the barren frozen landscape to dispense through labor. The reindeer surrounded round us, pawing the slippery ground in futility for mossy bits. This costly and laborious procedure is having a severe effect on herding practices—and on the animals' natural survival. However the alternative is death. As goavvi winters become routine, reindeer are perishing—some from hunger, others drowning after sinking in streams through unstable frozen surfaces. To some extent, the work is a tribute to them. "Through the stacking of components, in a way I'm introducing the condition to London," says Sara.

Contrasting Belief Systems

This artwork also highlights the clear difference between the modern view of electricity as a resource to be harnessed for gain and survival and the Sámi outlook of life force as an inherent power in animals, individuals, and land. Tate Modern's history as a industrial facility is linked with this, as is what the Sámi consider eco-imperialism by Scandinavian states. As they strive to be leaders for sustainable power, these states have clashed with the Sámi over the construction of turbine fields, hydroelectric dams, and extraction sites on their ancestral land; the Sámi assert their human rights, livelihoods, and culture are threatened. "It's hard being such a tiny group to defend yourself when the justifications are based on global sustainability," Sara observes. "Resource exploitation has adopted the rhetoric of ecology, but nonetheless it's just attempting to find better ways to continue practices of use."

Individual Struggles

She and her kin have themselves clashed with the Norwegian government over its ever-stricter rules on herding. A few years ago, Sara's brother initiated a sequence of unsuccessful legal cases over the required reduction of his livestock, supposedly to stop overgrazing. As a show of solidarity, Sara produced a multi-year set of artworks named Pile O'Sápmi including a huge drape of numerous reindeer skulls, which was shown at the 2017's art exhibition Documenta 14 and later purchased by the public gallery, where it is displayed in the entryway.

Art as Awareness

For many Sámi, art seems the only sphere in which they can be listened to by the global community. Recently, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|