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Guests to the renowned gallery are accustomed to surprising encounters in its expansive Turbine Hall. They have sunbathed under an simulated sun, descended down spiral slides, and observed AI-powered jellyfish drifting through the air. Yet this marks the initial time they will be immersing themselves in the intricate nasal passages of a reindeer. The current artistic project for this cavernous space—created by Indigenous Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—invites patrons into a maze-like design based on the scaled-up interior of a reindeer's nose passages. Upon entering, they can meander around or unwind on skins, tuning in on headphones to community leaders telling tales and wisdom.

The Significance of the Nose

Why choose the nasal structure? It might sound playful, but the artwork celebrates a little-known scientific wonder: scientists have discovered that in under a second, the reindeer's nose can warm the ambient air it takes in by 80°C, allowing the animal to survive in extreme Arctic climates. Scaling the nose to bigger than a person, Sara says, "creates a perception of smallness that you as a person are not superior over nature." She is a former reporter, young adult author, and land defender, who hails from a pastoral family in northern Norway. "Maybe that generates the possibility to shift your perspective or trigger some humbleness," she states.

A Tribute to Indigenous Heritage

The winding design is among various features in Sara's absorbing commission honoring the heritage, knowledge, and beliefs of the Sámi, Europe's only Indigenous people. Traditionally mobile, the Sámi total about 100,000 people spread across the Norwegian north, Finland, the Swedish Lapland, and the Kola region (an region they call Sápmi). They've endured discrimination, cultural suppression, and repression of their dialect by all four nations. With an emphasis on the reindeer, an animal at the core of the Sámi belief system and founding narrative, the art also spotlights the people's challenges connected to the global warming, property rights, and external control.

Symbolism in Elements

On the lengthy entry ramp, there's a towering, 26-meter sculpture of pelts entangled by power and light cables. It can be read as a symbol for the governance and financial structures constraining the Sámi. Like an electrical tower, part spiritual ascent, this part of the installation, called Goavve-, relates to the Sámi name for an extreme weather phenomenon, in which solid sheets of ice appear as changing conditions melt and solidify again the snow, locking in the reindeers' key winter food, moss. The condition is a consequence of global heating, which is taking place up to four times faster in the Polar region than elsewhere.

A few years back, I visited Sara in the Norwegian far north during a goavvi winter and joined Sámi pastoralists on their snowmobiles in biting cold as they transported trailers of food pellets on to the wind-scoured tundra to dispense through labor. The reindeer gathered round us, pawing the icy ground in vain attempts for vegetative morsels. This costly and demanding method is having a severe impact on reindeer husbandry—and on the animals' natural survival. But the choice is starvation. When such conditions become commonplace, reindeer are perishing—some from lack of food, others drowning after sinking in lakes and rivers through prematurely melting ice. In a sense, the installation is a monument to them. "By overlapping of components, in a way I'm transporting the condition to London," says Sara.

Contrasting Perspectives

The installation also underscores the stark divergence between the industrial interpretation of power as a asset to be harnessed for profit and survival and the Sámi outlook of energy as an natural essence in animals, individuals, and nature. Tate Modern's past as a coal and oil power station is linked with this, as is what the Sámi see as eco-imperialism by Scandinavian states. While attempting to be exemplars for clean sources, Scandinavian countries have locked horns with the Sámi over the construction of wind energy projects, river barriers, and mines on their traditional territory; the Sámi assert their fundamental freedoms, ways of life, and culture are threatened. "It's challenging being such a tiny group to protect your rights when the justifications are grounded in global sustainability," Sara observes. "Mining practices has appropriated the rhetoric of ecology, but nonetheless it's just aiming to find more suitable ways to persist in habits of expenditure."

Family Challenges

The artist and her kin have themselves disagreed with the Norwegian government over its tightening policies on animal husbandry. Previously, Sara's brother embarked on a sequence of ultimately unsuccessful lawsuits over the forced culling of his livestock, supposedly to stop excessive feeding. In support, Sara created a four-year collection of pieces called Pile O'Sápmi comprising a colossal curtain of numerous reindeer skulls, which was displayed at the 2017's event Documenta 14 and later acquired by the National Museum of Oslo, where it is displayed in the entrance.

Art as Activism

For many Sámi, creative work seems the sole domain in which they can be listened to by outsiders. Recently, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|