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Attendees to Tate Modern are accustomed to unexpected encounters in its spacious Turbine Hall. They have basked under an simulated sun, slid down spiral slides, and seen robotic sea creatures drifting through the air. Yet this marks the initial time they will be immersing themselves in the complex nasal cavities of a reindeer. The newest artist commission for this huge space—developed by Native Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—encourages visitors into a winding structure based on the enlarged interior of a reindeer's nose passages. Upon entering, they can stroll around or relax on reindeer hides, tuning in on earphones to Sámi elders telling stories and wisdom.

The Significance of the Nose

What's the focus on the nose? It might sound quirky, but the artwork honors a rarely recognized natural marvel: researchers have found that in less than one second, the reindeer's nose can heat the surrounding air it takes in by eighty degrees, allowing the creature to endure in extreme Arctic conditions. Enlarging the nose to bigger than a person, Sara notes, "produces a sense of inferiority that you as a individual are not in control over nature." She is a former reporter, young adult author, and rights advocate, who comes from a pastoral family in the far north of Norway. "Possibly that generates the possibility to change your perspective or evoke some modesty," she adds.

An Homage to Traditional Ways

The winding design is one of several features in Sara's engaging commission honoring the traditions, science, and beliefs of the Sámi, the sole native group in Europe. Partially migratory, the Sámi number roughly 100,000 people spread across northern Norway, the Finnish Arctic, Sweden, and the Russian Arctic (an area they call Sápmi). They've endured oppression, forced assimilation, and eradication of their dialect by all four states. By focusing on the reindeer, an animal at the center of the Sámi belief system and creation story, the installation also spotlights the people's challenges relating to the global warming, loss of territory, and external control.

Metaphor in Materials

At the long entrance incline, there's a looming, 26-meter structure of reindeer hides trapped by electrical wires. It can be read as a symbol for the governance and financial structures constraining the Sámi. Like an electrical tower, part spiritual ascent, this part of the artwork, called Goavve-, relates to the Sámi term for an severe climatic event, whereby solid sheets of ice develop as fluctuating temperatures thaw and ice over the snow, locking in the reindeers' primary cold-season food, fungus. This phenomenon is a consequence of planetary warming, which is happening up to much more rapidly in the Far North than globally.

Three years ago, I traveled to see Sara in a remote town during a severe cold period and went with Sámi reindeer keepers on their snowmobiles in chilly conditions as they carried carts of animal nutrition on to the barren tundra to distribute manually. The herd gathered round us, scratching the slippery ground in vain for mossy morsels. This costly and labour-intensive method is having a severe influence on reindeer husbandry—and on the animals' independence. Yet the alternative is malnutrition. When such conditions become commonplace, reindeer are dying—some from starvation, others submerging after sinking in lakes and rivers through unstable frozen surfaces. To some extent, the work is a tribute to them. "Through the stacking of materials, in a way I'm introducing the condition to London," says Sara.

Diverging Worldviews

The installation also highlights the sharp contrast between the modern view of power as a asset to be exploited for profit and existence and the Sámi outlook of vitality as an natural life force in animals, humans, and nature. This venue's legacy as a fossil fuel plant is linked with this, as is what the Sámi view as green colonialism by Nordic countries. While attempting to be exemplars for renewable energy, Nordic nations have locked horns with the Sámi over the building of windfarms, hydroelectric dams, and extraction sites on their ancestral land; the Sámi contend their fundamental freedoms, livelihoods, and way of life are threatened. "It's challenging being such a small minority to defend yourself when the justifications are based on environmental protection," Sara comments. "Resource exploitation has adopted the rhetoric of sustainability, but yet it's just attempting to find better ways to maintain habits of expenditure."

Family Struggles

Sara and her relatives have personally clashed with the state authorities over its tightening policies on animal husbandry. A few years ago, Sara's brother embarked on a set of ultimately unsuccessful lawsuits over the required reduction of his animals, apparently to stop excessive feeding. To back him, Sara created a extended series of pieces called Pile O'Sápmi featuring a colossal curtain of 400 reindeer skulls, which was displayed at the 2017 art exhibition Documenta 14 and later acquired by the National Museum of Oslo, where it is displayed in the entrance.

Creative Expression as Advocacy

For many Sámi, creative work is the only realm in which they can be understood by the global community. Recently, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|