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Visitors to Tate Modern are familiar to surprising encounters in its expansive Turbine Hall. They've basked under an artificial sun, descended down helter skelters, and seen AI-powered sea creatures floating through the air. However this marks the inaugural time they will be venturing themselves in the intricate nasal chambers of a reindeer. The newest artist commission for this cavernous space—created by Indigenous Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—invites visitors into a winding design based on the enlarged inside of a reindeer's nose cavities. Once inside, they can wander around or relax on reindeer hides, listening on headphones to tribal seniors sharing tales and insights.

Why the Nose?

Why choose the nasal structure? It might seem quirky, but the artwork honors a rarely recognized biological feat: researchers have discovered that in a fraction of a second, the reindeer's nose can heat the ambient air it breathes in by eighty degrees, helping the creature to thrive in extreme Arctic temperatures. Scaling the nose to bigger than a person, Sara explains, "produces a sense of inferiority that you as a individual are not superior over nature." The artist is a ex- journalist, children's author, and land defender, who hails from a pastoral family in the far north of Norway. "Maybe that generates the possibility to shift your viewpoint or trigger some humility," she states.

A Celebration to Traditional Ways

The winding structure is part of a features in Sara's engaging commission honoring the heritage, science, and philosophy of the Sámi, Europe's only Indigenous people. Semi-nomadic, 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 experienced persecution, integration policies, and suppression of their tongue by all four nations. With an emphasis on the reindeer, an creature at the center of the Sámi mythology and founding narrative, the work also draws attention to the community's struggles relating to the global warming, loss of territory, and colonialism.

Meaning in Materials

Along the extended entrance ramp, there's a soaring, 26-metre sculpture of skins ensnared by electrical wires. It serves as a metaphor for the political and economic systems restricting the Sámi. Part pylon, part celestial ladder, this component of the installation, titled Goavve-, refers to the Sámi term for an severe climatic event, whereby thick layers of ice appear as fluctuating conditions liquefy and solidify again the snow, locking in the reindeers' primary cold-season nourishment, fungus. This phenomenon is a consequence of planetary warming, which is happening up to four times faster in the Polar region than globally.

Three years ago, I traveled to see Sara in a remote town during a goavvi winter and went with Sámi pastoralists on their Arctic vehicles in biting cold as they hauled trailers of supplementary feed on to the barren tundra to dispense by hand. The reindeer surrounded round us, pawing the icy ground in vain for mossy bits. This costly and laborious method is having a significant impact on herding practices—and on the animals' self-sufficiency. However the other option is death. As goavvi winters become commonplace, reindeer are perishing—some from hunger, others submerging after sinking in lakes and rivers through prematurely melting ice. In a sense, the art is a tribute to them. "Through the stacking of materials, in a way I'm transporting the phenomenon to London," says Sara.

Contrasting Worldviews

The installation also underscores the clear divergence between the industrial view of electricity as a asset to be harnessed for profit and livelihood and the Sámi outlook of life force as an inherent life force in animals, humans, and land. This venue's legacy as a fossil fuel plant is connected to this, as is what the Sámi view as environmental exploitation by Scandinavian states. In their efforts to be standard bearers for renewable energy, these states have disagreed with the Sámi over the construction of wind energy projects, river barriers, and digging operations on their ancestral land; the Sámi contend their human rights, ways of life, and traditions are at risk. "It's very difficult being such a tiny group to protect your rights when the reasons are based on environmental protection," Sara observes. "Extractivism has appropriated the discourse of sustainability, but nonetheless it's just striving to find better ways to continue habits of consumption."

Individual Conflicts

Sara and her relatives have personally clashed with the national administration over its ever-stricter policies on animal husbandry. A few years ago, Sara's sibling embarked on a series of finally failed lawsuits over the mandatory slaughter of his animals, supposedly to stop overgrazing. In support, Sara developed a four-year collection of pieces titled Pile O'Sápmi featuring a massive screen of numerous cranial remains, which was shown at the 2017's show Documenta 14 and later obtained by the national institution, where it resides in the entrance.

Art as Awareness

For numerous Indigenous people, visual expression appears the sole domain in which they can be heard by the global community. Recently, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|