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Attendees to Tate Modern are accustomed to unusual encounters in its expansive Turbine Hall. They have sunbathed under an artificial sun, descended down helter skelters, and observed robotic jellyfish drifting through the air. But this marks the inaugural time they will be venturing themselves in the detailed nasal passages of a reindeer. The latest artistic project for this huge space—created by Native Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—encourages visitors into a winding construction based on the scaled-up inside of a reindeer's nasal airways. Inside, they can stroll around or relax on reindeer hides, listening on headphones to Sámi elders telling tales and knowledge.

Focus on the Nasal Passages

Why the nose? It might seem playful, but the exhibit pays tribute to 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 inhales by 80°C, allowing the animal to survive in inhospitable Arctic conditions. Scaling the nose to larger than human size, Sara says, "produces a perception of smallness that you as a individual are not dominant over nature." She is a former reporter, children's author, and environmental activist, who comes from a herding family in the Norwegian Arctic. "Maybe that creates the possibility to shift your viewpoint or spark some humility," she adds.

A Celebration to Indigenous Heritage

The maze-like structure is one of several components in Sara's immersive exhibition honoring the traditions, understanding, and worldview of the Sámi, the continent's original inhabitants. Traditionally mobile, the Sámi count approximately 100,000 people spread across the Norwegian north, Finland, the Swedish Lapland, and the Russian Arctic (an region they call Sápmi). They have endured oppression, integration policies, and eradication of their dialect by all four nations. Through highlighting the reindeer, an creature at the center of the Sámi cosmology and creation story, the work also draws attention to the group's struggles relating to the environmental emergency, loss of territory, and colonialism.

Metaphor in Elements

On the lengthy entry slope, there's a soaring, 26-meter formation of pelts ensnared by power and light cables. It can be read as a metaphor for the political and economic systems constraining the Sámi. Part pylon, part celestial ladder, this component of the artwork, called Goavve-, refers to the Sámi name for an severe climatic event, whereby solid coatings of ice appear as fluctuating temperatures liquefy and refreeze the snow, locking in the reindeers' key cold-season nourishment, lichen. Goavvi is a consequence of global heating, which is happening up to at an accelerated rate in the Polar region than in other regions.

Previously, I traveled to see Sara in a remote town during a goavvi winter and went with Sámi herders on their Arctic vehicles in chilly conditions as they transported trailers of food pellets on to the exposed tundra to provide by hand. The herd gathered round us, digging the slippery ground in futility for lichen-covered pieces. This expensive and laborious process is having a drastic impact on reindeer husbandry—and on the animals' independence. Yet the other option is malnutrition. When such conditions become frequent, reindeer are dying—some from hunger, others drowning after sinking in streams through thinning ice sheets. In a sense, the art is a monument to them. "With the layering of elements, in a way I'm transporting the condition to London," says Sara.

Diverging Perspectives

This artwork also emphasizes the sharp difference between the industrial understanding of power as a resource to be exploited for profit and survival and the Sámi philosophy of life force as an innate power in animals, individuals, and land. This venue's history as a coal and oil power station is connected to this, as is what the Sámi see as eco-imperialism by Nordic countries. In their efforts to be exemplars for clean sources, these states have clashed with the Sámi over the building of turbine fields, water power facilities, and mines on their ancestral land; the Sámi contend their legal protections, ways of life, and way of life are threatened. "It's hard being such a small minority to defend yourself when the arguments are grounded in saving the world," Sara observes. "Extractivism has appropriated the language of ecology, but still it's just attempting to find more suitable ways to persist in habits of expenditure."

Personal Challenges

Sara and her family have personally clashed with the state authorities over its ever-stricter rules on animal husbandry. A few years ago, Sara's sibling initiated a sequence of ultimately unsuccessful legal cases over the mandatory slaughter of his livestock, supposedly to stop vegetation depletion. As a show of solidarity, Sara developed a extended set of artworks called Pile O'Sápmi featuring a massive screen of 400 reindeer skulls, which was displayed at the 2017's show Documenta 14 and later obtained by the public gallery, where it is displayed in the lobby.

Art as Advocacy

For numerous Indigenous people, creative work is the sole domain in which they can be heard by outsiders. Recently, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|