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Guests to the renowned gallery are familiar to surprising encounters in its expansive Turbine Hall. They have sunbathed under an artificial sun, slid down amusement rides, and observed robotic sea creatures drifting through the air. But this marks the inaugural time they will be immersing themselves in the complex nose passages of a reindeer. The current artistic project for this huge space—created by Indigenous Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—welcomes visitors into a maze-like construction inspired by the scaled-up inside of a reindeer's nasal passages. Upon entering, they can meander around or unwind on pelts, tuning in on headphones to tribal seniors sharing narratives and knowledge.

Focus on the Nasal Passages

Why the nose? It may appear playful, but the exhibit pays tribute to a little-known natural marvel: researchers have discovered that in a fraction of a second, the reindeer's nose can heat the surrounding air it breathes in by 80 degrees celsius, helping the creature to survive in harsh Arctic temperatures. Scaling the nose to human-scale dimensions, Sara says, "generates a perception of insignificance that you as a person are not in control over nature." Sara is a former journalist, writer for kids, and environmental activist, who is from a reindeer-herding family in the far north of Norway. "Possibly that generates the chance to shift your perspective or evoke some modesty," she states.

A Tribute to Indigenous Heritage

The labyrinthine structure is part of a components in Sara's engaging commission showcasing the culture, understanding, and philosophy of the Sámi, the continent's original inhabitants. Partially migratory, the Sámi number roughly 100,000 people ranged across the Norwegian north, the Finnish Arctic, the Swedish Lapland, and Russia's Kola Peninsula (an region they call Sápmi). They have experienced persecution, integration policies, and suppression of their dialect by all four countries. Through highlighting the reindeer, an animal at the core of the Sámi cosmology and creation story, the art also draws attention to the community's issues associated with the global warming, property rights, and colonialism.

Meaning in Materials

At the lengthy entrance slope, there's a looming, 26-metre structure of reindeer hides trapped by utility lines. It serves as a analogy for the societal frameworks restricting the Sámi. Part pylon, part spiritual ascent, this component of the artwork, named Goavve-, points to the Sámi term for an extreme weather phenomenon, in which dense layers of ice appear as changing weather thaw and solidify again the snow, encasing the reindeers' main cold-season sustenance, lichen. This phenomenon is a outcome of climate change, which is taking place up to at an accelerated rate in the Arctic than elsewhere.

Previously, I traveled to see Sara in a remote town during a icy season and accompanied Sámi reindeer keepers on their Arctic vehicles in biting cold as they hauled carts of supplementary feed on to the barren tundra to distribute by hand. The herd crowded round us, digging the frozen ground in vain attempts for vegetative pieces. This expensive and laborious procedure is having a severe impact on animal rearing—and on the animals' natural survival. Yet the choice is malnutrition. When such conditions become commonplace, reindeer are dying—a number from lack of food, others drowning after falling into water bodies through thinning ice sheets. To some extent, the installation is a monument to them. "With the layering of materials, in a way I'm transporting the goavvi to London," says Sara.

Diverging Perspectives

The sculpture also emphasizes the sharp difference between the western view of energy as a asset to be utilized for profit and survival and the Sámi worldview of life force as an inherent life force in animals, humans, and land. Tate Modern's past as a coal and oil power station is linked with this, as is what the Sámi see as environmental exploitation by Nordic countries. As they strive to be leaders for clean sources, Scandinavian countries have locked horns with the Sámi over the construction of wind energy projects, hydroelectric dams, and digging operations on their ancestral land; the Sámi argue their human rights, livelihoods, and way of life are endangered. "It's challenging being such a tiny group to defend yourself when the justifications are grounded in saving the world," Sara observes. "Extractivism has co-opted the language of ecology, but nonetheless it's just striving to find better ways to persist in patterns of expenditure."

Individual Struggles

She and her kin have personally disagreed with the Norwegian government over its tightening regulations on reindeer management. In 2016, Sara's brother initiated a sequence of unsuccessful legal cases over the required reduction of his herd, ostensibly to stop excessive feeding. In support, Sara produced a four-year series of artworks named Pile O'Sápmi comprising a colossal curtain of 400 reindeer skulls, which was shown at the 2017 event Documenta 14 and later acquired by the National Museum of Oslo, where it hangs in the entryway.

The Role of Art in Advocacy

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