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Guests to Tate Modern are familiar to unexpected encounters in its expansive Turbine Hall. They have relaxed under an man-made sun, glided down spiral slides, and witnessed automated sea creatures floating through the air. But this marks the inaugural time they will be immersing themselves in the detailed nose chambers of a reindeer. The current creative installation for this huge space—developed by Native Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—encourages gallerygoers into a maze-like design inspired by the expanded inside of a reindeer's nasal airways. Upon entering, they can stroll around or relax on skins, tuning in on headphones to tribal seniors telling stories and insights.

Focus on the Nasal Passages

Why the nose? It might sound whimsical, but the installation celebrates a obscure natural marvel: scientists have found that in less than one second, the reindeer's nose can raise the temperature of the surrounding air it inhales by 80°C, helping the creature to survive in inhospitable Arctic conditions. Expanding the nose to bigger than a person, Sara explains, "creates a feeling of smallness that you as a individual are not in control over nature." The artist is a former reporter, young adult author, and rights advocate, who is from a reindeer-herding family in the far north of Norway. "Perhaps that creates the chance to alter your perspective or evoke some humbleness," she adds.

An Homage to Indigenous Heritage

The winding design is one of several components in Sara's engaging commission celebrating the heritage, understanding, and philosophy of the Sámi, the sole native group in Europe. Partially migratory, the Sámi number roughly 100,000 people spread across the Norwegian north, Finland, Sweden, and Russia's Kola Peninsula (an area they call Sápmi). They have faced discrimination, integration policies, and repression of their dialect by all four countries. With an emphasis on the reindeer, an animal at the heart of the Sámi mythology and origin tale, the work also spotlights the community's challenges relating to the global warming, land dispossession, and external control.

Meaning in Elements

On the long entrance incline, there's a towering, 26-metre sculpture of reindeer hides ensnared by power and light cables. It can be read as a symbol for the societal frameworks restricting the Sámi. Like an electrical tower, part celestial ladder, this component of the artwork, named Goavve-, relates to the Sámi word for an extreme weather phenomenon, in which thick layers of ice develop as changing temperatures melt and refreeze the snow, trapping the reindeers' key winter food, moss. The condition is a outcome of planetary warming, which is happening up to much more rapidly in the Arctic than elsewhere.

A few years back, I traveled to see Sara in a remote town during a icy season and accompanied Sámi pastoralists on their snowmobiles in freezing temperatures as they carried containers of supplementary feed on to the barren Arctic plains to dispense through labor. The reindeer surrounded round us, digging the frozen ground in vain for vegetative morsels. This expensive and demanding process is having a drastic influence on reindeer husbandry—and on the animals' self-sufficiency. Yet the choice is malnutrition. When such conditions become frequent, reindeer are perishing—a number from lack of food, others suffocating after sinking in streams through unstable frozen surfaces. To some extent, the work is a monument to them. "With the layering of elements, in a way I'm transporting the condition to London," says Sara.

Opposing Worldviews

The installation also underscores the stark contrast between the modern view of power as a resource to be exploited for economic benefit and existence and the Sámi philosophy of energy as an innate life force in animals, individuals, and the environment. Tate Modern's past as a coal and oil power station is linked with this, as is what the Sámi see as eco-imperialism by regional governments. As they strive to be leaders for renewable energy, Nordic nations have clashed with the Sámi over the building of turbine fields, hydroelectric dams, and digging operations on their native soil; the Sámi argue their legal protections, livelihoods, and traditions are threatened. "It's very difficult being such a tiny group to stand your ground when the reasons are based on global sustainability," Sara observes. "Extractivism has adopted the language of ecology, but nonetheless it's just attempting to find more suitable ways to continue habits of use."

Family Conflicts

Sara and her family have themselves clashed with the Norwegian government over its increasingly stringent rules on herding. A few years ago, Sara's sibling initiated a series of ultimately unsuccessful legal cases over the forced culling of his animals, supposedly to stop vegetation depletion. As a show of solidarity, Sara produced a four-year collection of artworks called Pile O'Sápmi comprising a massive curtain of four hundred cranial remains, which was exhibited at the the event Documenta 14 and later purchased by the public gallery, where it hangs in the lobby.

The Role of Art in Advocacy

For many Sámi, art appears the only domain in which they can be heard by people of other nations. Two years ago, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|