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Visitors to the renowned gallery are used to surprising experiences in its vast Turbine Hall. They've sunbathed under an simulated sun, descended down spiral slides, and seen automated jellyfish hovering through the air. But this marks the first time they will be immersing themselves in the intricate nasal chambers of a reindeer. The current creative installation for this immense space—developed by Indigenous Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—encourages patrons into a labyrinthine design inspired by the expanded inside of a reindeer's nasal passages. Once inside, they can meander around or unwind on pelts, tuning in on earphones to tribal seniors imparting stories and knowledge.

The Significance of the Nose

Why the nose? It could appear playful, but the exhibit pays tribute to a rarely recognized biological feat: scientists have uncovered that in a fraction of a second, the reindeer's nose can warm the incoming air it inhales by 80°C, allowing the creature to thrive in harsh Arctic climates. Enlarging the nose to human-scale dimensions, Sara says, "produces a sense of inferiority that you as a person are not in control over nature." Sara is a ex- journalist, young adult author, and rights advocate, who hails from a pastoral family in northern Norway. "Possibly that generates the potential to shift your perspective or trigger some humbleness," she states.

A Tribute to Sámi Culture

The maze-like structure is one of several components in Sara's engaging commission showcasing the heritage, science, and beliefs of the Sámi, Europe's only Indigenous people. Semi-nomadic, the Sámi total about 100,000 people distributed across the Norwegian north, the Finnish Arctic, the Swedish Lapland, and the Russian Arctic (an region they call Sápmi). They have endured persecution, integration policies, and repression of their language by all four countries. With an emphasis on the reindeer, an animal at the center of the Sámi mythology and founding narrative, the work also draws attention to the community's challenges connected to the environmental emergency, loss of territory, and external control.

Meaning in Elements

On the long entry ramp, there's a towering, eighty-five-foot formation of reindeer hides trapped by utility lines. It serves as a metaphor for the governance and financial structures restricting the Sámi. Like an electrical tower, part spiritual ascent, this component of the installation, called Goavve-, points to the Sámi name for an extreme weather phenomenon, whereby dense sheets of ice form as changing weather melt and ice over the snow, locking in the reindeers' key cold-season sustenance, lichen. The condition is a outcome of global heating, which is taking place up to at an accelerated rate in the Arctic than elsewhere.

Three years ago, I met with Sara in a remote town during a goavvi winter and went with Sámi herders on their motorized sleds in chilly conditions as they hauled carts of food pellets on to the exposed frozen landscape to distribute by hand. These animals gathered round us, digging the slippery ground in futility for mossy morsels. This costly and labour-intensive process is having a severe influence on herding practices—and on the animals' natural survival. However the choice is malnutrition. As goavvi winters become frequent, reindeer are perishing—some from starvation, others submerging after sinking in lakes and rivers through prematurely melting ice. On one level, the installation is a memorial to them. "By overlapping of materials, in a way I'm bringing the goavvi to London," says Sara.

Contrasting Perspectives

This artwork also highlights the stark divergence between the industrial understanding of energy as a commodity to be utilized for profit and survival and the Sámi worldview of energy as an innate power in creatures, people, and nature. Tate Modern's history as a fossil fuel plant is tied up in this, as is what the Sámi consider green colonialism by Nordic countries. While attempting to be leaders for clean sources, Nordic nations have disagreed with the Sámi over the development of turbine fields, water power facilities, and digging operations on their ancestral land; the Sámi contend their legal protections, ways of life, and culture are at risk. "It's very difficult being such a small minority to protect your rights when the justifications are rooted in saving the world," Sara notes. "Extractivism has appropriated the discourse of environmentalism, but nonetheless it's just aiming to find more suitable ways to maintain practices of consumption."

Personal Struggles

The artist and her relatives have themselves conflicted with the national administration over its ever-stricter policies on animal husbandry. In 2016, Sara's sibling initiated a sequence of ultimately unsuccessful court actions over the required reduction of his herd, apparently to stop overgrazing. As a show of solidarity, Sara developed a multi-year series of pieces named Pile O'Sápmi featuring a colossal screen of numerous animal bones, which was exhibited at the 2017 art exhibition Documenta 14 and later acquired by the National Museum of Oslo, where it resides in the entrance.

Art as Activism

For numerous Indigenous people, creative work appears the only sphere in which they can be listened to by outsiders. Recently, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|