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Guests to the renowned gallery are used to unusual encounters in its expansive Turbine Hall. They have basked under an artificial sun, slid down helter skelters, and witnessed robotic jellyfish floating through the air. However this marks the first time they will be immersing themselves in the complex nose cavities of a reindeer. The latest creative installation for this cavernous space—created by Native Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—encourages patrons into a winding design modeled after the expanded inside of a reindeer's nose passages. Upon entering, they can stroll around or chill out on pelts, listening on headphones to Sámi elders telling tales and wisdom.

Why the Nose?

Why choose the nasal structure? It may appear whimsical, but the exhibit celebrates a obscure scientific wonder: experts have uncovered that in under a second, the reindeer's nose can raise the temperature of the incoming air it takes in by 80°C, enabling the animal to endure in inhospitable Arctic temperatures. Scaling the nose to larger than human size, Sara notes, "creates a perception of insignificance that you as a person are not superior over nature." Sara is a former journalist, young adult author, and rights advocate, who hails from a herding family in the far north of Norway. "Perhaps that generates the potential to alter your viewpoint or evoke some humility," she adds.

A Celebration to Indigenous Heritage

The maze-like installation is among various components in Sara's immersive commission celebrating the heritage, knowledge, and worldview of the Sámi, the continent's original inhabitants. Traditionally mobile, the Sámi count roughly 100,000 people spread across northern Norway, the Finnish Arctic, Sweden, and the Russian Arctic (an region they call Sápmi). They have endured oppression, integration policies, and repression of their tongue by all four nations. Through highlighting the reindeer, an animal at the center of the Sámi mythology and founding narrative, the work also spotlights the people's challenges connected to the climate crisis, loss of territory, and colonialism.

Symbolism in Materials

On the lengthy entrance incline, there's a towering, 26-meter structure of skins trapped by power and light cables. It serves as a symbol for the societal frameworks restricting the Sámi. Part pylon, part spiritual ascent, this component of the artwork, named Goavve-, refers to the Sámi term for an extreme weather phenomenon, wherein dense coatings of ice form as changing conditions thaw and ice over the snow, encasing the reindeers' primary cold-season food, fungus. This phenomenon is a outcome of climate change, which is taking place up to much more rapidly in the Arctic than globally.

Three years ago, I met with Sara in Guovdageaidnu during a goavvi winter and joined Sámi herders on their motorized sleds in chilly conditions as they transported containers of food pellets on to the wind-scoured Arctic plains to dispense through labor. The reindeer gathered round us, digging the icy ground in vain attempts for mossy bits. This costly and labour-intensive process is having a significant effect on animal rearing—and on the animals' self-sufficiency. But the alternative is death. As these icy periods become frequent, reindeer are succumbing—some from hunger, others submerging after plunging into lakes and rivers through unstable frozen surfaces. On one level, the installation is a monument to them. "By overlapping of materials, in a way I'm bringing the goavvi to London," says Sara.

Contrasting Worldviews

This artwork also underscores the clear divergence between the industrial view of energy as a resource to be exploited for profit and existence and the Sámi philosophy of life force as an natural power in creatures, individuals, and nature. Tate Modern's legacy as a industrial facility is tied up in this, as is what the Sámi view as eco-imperialism by Nordic countries. While attempting to be leaders for sustainable power, Nordic nations have disagreed with the Sámi over the construction of windfarms, water power facilities, and digging operations on their traditional territory; the Sámi argue their legal protections, ways of life, and way of life are endangered. "It's very difficult being such a tiny group to stand your ground when the justifications are grounded in saving the world," Sara notes. "Mining practices has appropriated the language of sustainability, but yet it's just aiming to find better ways to maintain patterns of use."

Family Struggles

The artist and her relatives have personally conflicted with the Norwegian government over its increasingly stringent policies on animal husbandry. Previously, Sara's sibling undertook a set of ultimately unsuccessful legal cases over the mandatory slaughter of his animals, supposedly to stop vegetation depletion. As a show of solidarity, Sara developed a extended collection of pieces called Pile O'Sápmi featuring a colossal drape of 400 cranial remains, which was exhibited at the 2017's show Documenta 14 and later obtained by the National Museum of Oslo, where it is displayed in the entrance.

Art as Activism

For numerous Indigenous people, art seems the exclusive realm in which they can be understood by the global community. Two years ago, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|