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Attendees to Tate Modern are familiar to surprising experiences in its expansive Turbine Hall. They've basked under an artificial sun, descended down helter skelters, and seen automated jellyfish floating through the air. Yet this marks the initial time they will be immersing themselves in the complex nose cavities of a reindeer. The latest artist commission for this huge space—designed by Indigenous Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—encourages visitors into a labyrinthine structure based on the expanded interior of a reindeer's nasal passages. Inside, they can wander around or relax on reindeer hides, tuning in on earphones to Sámi elders telling narratives and knowledge.

Why the Nose?

Why choose the nasal structure? It could sound playful, but the artwork honors a rarely recognized biological feat: scientists have uncovered that in less than one second, the reindeer's nose can warm the surrounding air it breathes in by 80°C, helping the animal to thrive in extreme Arctic climates. Scaling the nose to human-scale dimensions, Sara notes, "generates a perception of insignificance that you as a individual are not dominant over nature." Sara is a ex- writer, young adult author, and environmental activist, who is from a herding family in the far north of Norway. "Maybe that generates the possibility to shift your viewpoint or evoke some humbleness," she adds.

A Celebration to Sámi Culture

The winding design is part of a components in Sara's absorbing commission showcasing the heritage, knowledge, and philosophy of the Sámi, the sole native group in Europe. Partially migratory, the Sámi total about 100,000 people distributed across northern Norway, the Finnish Arctic, Sweden, and the Kola region (an territory they call Sápmi). They've faced oppression, forced assimilation, and repression of their dialect by all four countries. Through highlighting the reindeer, an animal at the center of the Sámi mythology and origin tale, the art also spotlights the community's challenges connected to the climate crisis, property rights, and imperialism.

Symbolism in Materials

At the extended entry slope, there's a looming, 26-meter structure of skins ensnared by utility lines. It represents a analogy for the political and economic systems constraining the Sámi. Like an electrical tower, part celestial ladder, this section of the artwork, titled Goavve-, points to the Sámi term for an extreme weather phenomenon, whereby solid layers of ice form as fluctuating temperatures thaw and solidify again the snow, encasing the reindeers' key cold-season sustenance, fungus. This phenomenon is a result of global heating, which is taking place up to at an accelerated rate in the Far North than elsewhere.

Previously, I traveled to see Sara in Guovdageaidnu during a severe cold period and went with Sámi reindeer keepers on their Arctic vehicles in freezing temperatures as they transported carts of supplementary feed on to the barren frozen landscape to provide through labor. These animals surrounded round us, scratching the icy ground in futility for vegetative pieces. This expensive and laborious process is having a significant effect on reindeer husbandry—and on the animals' natural survival. However the choice is death. As these icy periods become commonplace, reindeer are dying—some from starvation, others drowning after sinking in water bodies through thinning ice sheets. In a sense, the work is a monument to them. "By overlapping of elements, in a way I'm bringing the condition to London," says Sara.

Opposing Belief Systems

The sculpture also emphasizes the sharp contrast between the industrial understanding of energy as a asset to be utilized for gain and survival and the Sámi worldview of life force as an inherent essence in creatures, humans, and nature. The gallery's past as a coal and oil power station is connected to this, as is what the Sámi see as environmental exploitation by Scandinavian states. While attempting to be leaders for sustainable power, Scandinavian countries have locked horns with the Sámi over the construction of turbine fields, water power facilities, and digging operations on their traditional territory; the Sámi argue their fundamental freedoms, ways of life, and traditions are at risk. "It's very difficult being such a tiny group to protect your rights when the justifications are grounded in saving the world," Sara comments. "Resource exploitation has co-opted the rhetoric of sustainability, but nonetheless it's just striving to find more suitable ways to continue habits of use."

Personal Struggles

The artist and her relatives have personally conflicted with the national administration over its tightening policies on reindeer management. Previously, Sara's sibling embarked on a sequence of ultimately unsuccessful court actions over the forced culling of his herd, ostensibly to stop vegetation depletion. To back him, Sara developed a multi-year series of artworks titled Pile O'Sápmi featuring a massive curtain of four hundred cranial remains, which was shown at the the show Documenta 14 and later purchased by the public gallery, where it hangs in the lobby.

The Role of Art in Advocacy

Among the community, visual expression appears the sole domain in which they can be understood by outsiders. Recently, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|