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Guests to Tate Modern are familiar to unexpected displays in its spacious Turbine Hall. They've basked under an man-made sun, descended down spiral slides, and seen automated jellyfish floating through the air. Yet this marks the first time they will be engaging themselves in the complex nasal cavities of a reindeer. The current artistic project for this cavernous space—developed by Native Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—encourages visitors into a maze-like design based on the scaled-up inside of a reindeer's nasal airways. Once inside, they can meander around or unwind on pelts, tuning in on headphones to community leaders telling stories and insights.

Why the Nose?

What's the focus on the nose? It could sound quirky, but the installation honors a obscure biological feat: experts have discovered that in less than one second, the reindeer's nose can raise the temperature of the incoming air it takes in by 80 degrees celsius, enabling the creature to survive in harsh Arctic temperatures. Enlarging the nose to bigger than a person, Sara says, "generates a perception of smallness that you as a human being are not in control over nature." She is a ex- writer, writer for kids, and rights advocate, who is from a pastoral family in northern Norway. "Possibly that creates the chance to alter your outlook or evoke some humbleness," she adds.

A Celebration to Sámi Culture

The winding design is one of several elements in Sara's engaging commission celebrating the traditions, science, and philosophy of the Sámi, the continent's original inhabitants. Traditionally mobile, the Sámi total roughly 100,000 people spread across northern Norway, Finland, Sweden, and the Russian Arctic (an area they call Sápmi). They have experienced persecution, integration policies, and eradication of their tongue by all four nations. Through highlighting the reindeer, an creature at the heart of the Sámi mythology and origin tale, the installation also draws attention to the group's issues associated with the environmental emergency, property rights, and imperialism.

Metaphor in Materials

Along the long entrance incline, there's a towering, eighty-five-foot sculpture of reindeer hides trapped by power and light cables. It represents a metaphor for the governance and financial structures constraining the Sámi. Partly a utility pole, part celestial ladder, this section of the installation, called Goavve-, relates to the Sámi name for an extreme weather phenomenon, wherein thick layers of ice form as fluctuating temperatures melt and refreeze the snow, trapping the reindeers' key winter sustenance, moss. This phenomenon is a outcome of climate change, which is taking place up to four times faster in the Far North than globally.

Previously, I met with Sara in the Norwegian far north during a icy season and went with Sámi reindeer keepers on their motorized sleds in biting cold as they hauled carts of food pellets on to the exposed frozen landscape to provide manually. The reindeer crowded round us, scratching the icy ground in vain attempts for mossy pieces. This costly and laborious method is having a drastic influence on reindeer husbandry—and on the animals' natural survival. However the choice is malnutrition. As these icy periods become routine, reindeer are perishing—some from lack of food, others suffocating after plunging into lakes and rivers 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 goavvi to London," says Sara.

Diverging Belief Systems

This artwork also emphasizes the stark divergence between the western view of energy as a resource to be utilized for economic benefit and survival and the Sámi philosophy of vitality as an inherent essence in creatures, people, and land. The gallery's legacy as a coal and oil power station is tied up in this, as is what the Sámi see as green colonialism by Nordic countries. In their efforts to be leaders for sustainable power, Nordic nations have disagreed with the Sámi over the construction of turbine fields, hydroelectric dams, and digging operations on their native soil; the Sámi assert their fundamental freedoms, incomes, and way of life are at risk. "It's hard being such a small minority to stand your ground when the arguments are grounded in environmental protection," Sara comments. "Resource exploitation has adopted the language of environmentalism, but yet it's just attempting to find alternative ways to maintain practices of use."

Family Challenges

Sara and her relatives have themselves clashed with the Norwegian government over its ever-stricter regulations on animal husbandry. Previously, Sara's sibling initiated a sequence of ultimately unsuccessful legal cases over the forced culling of his herd, supposedly to stop vegetation depletion. In support, Sara created a multi-year series of creations named Pile O'Sápmi including a huge drape of 400 cranial remains, which was shown at the the event Documenta 14 and later acquired by the national institution, where it is displayed in the lobby.

Creative Expression as Activism

Among the community, visual expression appears the exclusive domain in which they can be listened to by people of other nations. Two years ago, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|