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Attendees to Tate Modern are accustomed to surprising displays in its spacious Turbine Hall. They've basked under an artificial sun, descended down helter skelters, and observed robotic sea creatures hovering through the air. However this marks the inaugural time they will be engaging themselves in the complex nose passages of a reindeer. The current creative installation for this huge space—developed by Indigenous Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—encourages patrons into a labyrinthine construction modeled after the enlarged interior of a reindeer's nasal passages. Once inside, they can wander around or relax on skins, listening on earphones to tribal seniors sharing stories and knowledge.

Focus on the Nasal Passages

Why choose the nasal structure? It may sound whimsical, but the installation honors a little-known biological feat: researchers have discovered that in a fraction of a second, the reindeer's nose can warm the incoming air it breathes in by 80 degrees celsius, helping the animal to survive in harsh Arctic temperatures. Expanding the nose to larger than human size, Sara notes, "creates a sense of inferiority that you as a person are not dominant over nature." The artist is a former writer, young adult author, and rights advocate, who hails from a herding family in the far north of Norway. "Maybe that creates the possibility to change your perspective or spark some modesty," she states.

An Homage to Sámi Culture

The winding design is one of several elements in Sara's immersive exhibition celebrating the traditions, knowledge, and worldview of the Sámi, the sole native group in Europe. Semi-nomadic, the Sámi total approximately 100,000 people spread across the Norwegian north, Finland, Sweden, and the Kola region (an territory they call Sápmi). They've faced persecution, cultural suppression, and repression of their tongue by all four nations. With an emphasis on the reindeer, an animal at the core of the Sámi belief system and creation story, the art also spotlights the community's issues connected to the global warming, property rights, and colonialism.

Metaphor in Components

Along the extended access slope, there's a towering, eighty-five-foot structure of pelts entangled by power and light cables. It serves as a symbol for the political and economic systems limiting the Sámi. Part pylon, part heavenly staircase, this component of the exhibit, called Goavve-, relates to the Sámi term for an harsh environmental condition, whereby thick coatings of ice appear as fluctuating temperatures thaw and solidify again the snow, locking in the reindeers' main winter food, moss. Goavvi is a consequence of global heating, which is taking place up to four times faster in the Polar region than elsewhere.

Three years ago, I visited Sara in the Norwegian far north during a icy season and joined Sámi herders on their Arctic vehicles in chilly conditions as they hauled carts of supplementary feed on to the barren frozen landscape to distribute manually. The herd gathered round us, pawing the icy ground in vain for lichen-covered morsels. This costly and laborious procedure is having a drastic effect on reindeer husbandry—and on the animals' natural survival. But the choice is starvation. When such conditions become commonplace, reindeer are perishing—some from hunger, others submerging after falling into lakes and rivers through prematurely melting ice. To some extent, the work is a tribute to them. "Through the stacking of elements, in a way I'm transporting the goavvi to London," says Sara.

Opposing Worldviews

The installation also underscores the clear divergence between the western view of energy as a commodity to be utilized for gain and survival and the Sámi philosophy of vitality as an inherent power in creatures, individuals, and nature. The gallery's legacy as a fossil fuel plant is linked with this, as is what the Sámi consider eco-imperialism by regional governments. In their efforts to be leaders for sustainable power, these states have locked horns with the Sámi over the building of wind energy projects, river barriers, and digging operations on their traditional territory; the Sámi contend their legal protections, incomes, and culture are threatened. "It's hard being such a limited population to protect your rights when the reasons are based on saving the world," Sara notes. "Extractivism has co-opted the rhetoric of environmentalism, but nonetheless it's just attempting to find better ways to maintain habits of consumption."

Family Conflicts

Sara and her family have themselves disagreed with the Norwegian government over its tightening policies on animal husbandry. In 2016, Sara's brother undertook a sequence of finally failed lawsuits over the mandatory slaughter of his herd, supposedly to stop overgrazing. As a show of solidarity, Sara created a extended collection of creations titled Pile O'Sápmi comprising a massive screen of numerous cranial remains, which was displayed at the 2017 event Documenta 14 and later purchased by the national institution, where it resides in the entrance.

The Role of Art in Activism

For many Sámi, visual expression seems the only domain in which they can be heard by the global community. Two years ago, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|