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Guests to the renowned gallery are accustomed to unexpected encounters in its vast Turbine Hall. They've basked under an artificial sun, glided down helter skelters, and seen AI-powered sea creatures floating through the air. Yet this marks the first time they will be immersing themselves in the detailed nasal chambers of a reindeer. The latest artistic project for this cavernous space—developed by Indigenous Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—welcomes visitors into a labyrinthine structure inspired by the enlarged interior of a reindeer's nose cavities. Upon entering, they can wander around or unwind on pelts, listening on earphones to tribal seniors sharing narratives and insights.

Focus on the Nasal Passages

Why the nose? It may seem quirky, but the artwork pays tribute to a rarely recognized natural marvel: researchers have discovered that in under a second, the reindeer's nose can warm the ambient air it inhales by 80 degrees celsius, helping the creature to thrive in harsh Arctic climates. Expanding the nose to bigger than a person, Sara notes, "produces a sense of smallness that you as a human being are not in control over nature." She is a ex- writer, young adult author, and land defender, who hails from a pastoral family in northern Norway. "Maybe that creates the potential to change your viewpoint or evoke some humbleness," she states.

A Tribute to Sámi Culture

The winding installation is part of a components in Sara's immersive art project showcasing the traditions, science, and beliefs of the Sámi, the sole native group in Europe. Traditionally mobile, the Sámi count about 100,000 people ranged across northern Norway, the Finnish Arctic, Sweden, and the Kola region (an region they call Sápmi). They've faced oppression, cultural suppression, and suppression of their dialect by all four nations. By focusing on the reindeer, an animal at the core of the Sámi belief system and origin tale, the installation also draws attention to the community's issues connected to the global warming, property rights, and colonialism.

Symbolism in Elements

On the long entry incline, there's a towering, 26-metre sculpture of pelts entangled by electrical wires. It serves as a metaphor for the governance and financial structures limiting the Sámi. Partly a utility pole, part celestial ladder, this section of the exhibit, titled Goavve-, relates to the Sámi word for an severe climatic event, wherein dense coatings of ice develop as changing conditions melt and refreeze the snow, locking in the reindeers' main cold-season food, fungus. The condition is a outcome of global heating, which is happening up to at an accelerated rate in the Far North than in other regions.

A few years back, I visited Sara in a remote town during a severe cold period and accompanied Sámi reindeer keepers on their motorized sleds in biting cold as they hauled trailers of supplementary feed on to the barren tundra to dispense manually. The reindeer crowded round us, digging the icy ground in futility for mossy bits. This costly and labour-intensive procedure is having a drastic impact on reindeer husbandry—and on the animals' self-sufficiency. But the alternative is starvation. When such conditions become commonplace, reindeer are perishing—a number from lack of food, others suffocating after falling into lakes and rivers through thinning ice sheets. On one level, the work is a memorial to them. "By overlapping of materials, in a way I'm bringing the condition to London," says Sara.

Diverging Worldviews

The sculpture also emphasizes the clear divergence between the western understanding of electricity as a asset to be harnessed for economic benefit and survival and the Sámi outlook of vitality as an innate power in creatures, individuals, and nature. Tate Modern's legacy as a coal and oil power station is connected to this, as is what the Sámi see as environmental exploitation by regional governments. In their efforts to be exemplars for sustainable power, Nordic nations have clashed with the Sámi over the building of turbine fields, river barriers, and extraction sites on their native soil; the Sámi contend their legal protections, ways of life, and traditions are threatened. "It's hard being such a small minority to stand your ground when the reasons are based on environmental protection," Sara notes. "Resource exploitation has adopted the rhetoric of environmentalism, but still it's just aiming to find more suitable ways to persist in practices of consumption."

Family Challenges

The artist and her relatives have themselves disagreed with the state authorities over its increasingly stringent regulations on herding. Previously, Sara's brother undertook a set of finally failed court actions over the required reduction of his livestock, ostensibly to stop vegetation depletion. To back him, Sara developed a four-year series of creations called Pile O'Sápmi featuring a huge screen of numerous cranial remains, which was exhibited at the 2017 event Documenta 14 and later purchased by the public gallery, where it is displayed in the entryway.

Art as Awareness

For many Sámi, art appears the sole realm in which they can be heard by the global community. Recently, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|