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Guests to the renowned gallery are familiar to unexpected experiences in its spacious Turbine Hall. They've relaxed under an man-made sun, glided down helter skelters, and observed robotic jellyfish floating through the air. But this marks the inaugural time they will be immersing themselves in the complex nasal cavities of a reindeer. The latest creative installation for this cavernous space—developed by Native Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—invites patrons into a maze-like construction inspired by the enlarged interior of a reindeer's nose passages. Upon entering, they can meander around or unwind on reindeer hides, listening on headphones to Sámi elders sharing stories and wisdom.

Focus on the Nasal Passages

What's the focus on the nose? It might seem quirky, but the exhibit celebrates a obscure scientific wonder: experts have uncovered that in less than one second, the reindeer's nose can raise the temperature of the surrounding air it takes in by eighty degrees, allowing the creature to survive in inhospitable Arctic climates. Enlarging the nose to larger than human size, Sara explains, "produces a sense of inferiority that you as a person are not superior over nature." She is a former writer, young adult author, and rights advocate, who comes from a herding family in northern Norway. "Maybe that fosters the potential to shift your outlook or trigger some humility," she states.

An Homage to Sámi Culture

The labyrinthine installation is part of a components in Sara's absorbing exhibition honoring the heritage, knowledge, and worldview of the Sámi, Europe's only Indigenous people. Semi-nomadic, the Sámi number roughly 100,000 people ranged across the Norwegian north, Finland, Sweden, and the Russian Arctic (an territory they call Sápmi). They have endured persecution, forced assimilation, and repression of their dialect by all four nations. Through highlighting the reindeer, an creature at the center of the Sámi mythology and creation story, the installation also spotlights the group's issues relating to the climate crisis, property rights, and imperialism.

Symbolism in Materials

Along the long entry ramp, there's a soaring, 26-metre sculpture of reindeer hides trapped by utility lines. It serves as a symbol for the governance and financial structures constraining the Sámi. Partly a utility pole, part celestial ladder, this component of the exhibit, called Goavve-, points to the Sámi word for an harsh environmental condition, whereby dense coatings of ice appear as changing weather melt and ice over the snow, locking in the reindeers' main cold-season food, moss. The condition is a consequence of global heating, which is happening up to at an accelerated rate in the Arctic than in other regions.

Three years ago, I met with Sara in Guovdageaidnu during a icy season and accompanied Sámi reindeer keepers on their motorized sleds in chilly conditions as they hauled containers of supplementary feed on to the exposed tundra to dispense by hand. The reindeer crowded round us, pawing the slippery ground in futility for lichen-covered bits. This expensive and demanding process is having a significant impact on animal rearing—and on the animals' self-sufficiency. Yet the choice is death. As these icy periods become routine, reindeer are perishing—a number from starvation, others submerging after plunging into lakes and rivers through prematurely melting ice. In a sense, the installation is a tribute to them. "Through the stacking of components, in a way I'm transporting the goavvi to London," says Sara.

Diverging Belief Systems

The sculpture also highlights the stark contrast between the western understanding of energy as a commodity to be utilized for profit and livelihood and the Sámi philosophy of life force as an natural essence in animals, individuals, and the environment. Tate Modern's legacy as a industrial facility is connected to this, as is what the Sámi view as green colonialism by Nordic countries. While attempting to be standard bearers for sustainable power, Scandinavian countries have disagreed with the Sámi over the building of wind energy projects, hydroelectric dams, and digging operations on their traditional territory; the Sámi contend their human rights, livelihoods, and way of life are at risk. "It's challenging being such a tiny group to protect your rights when the reasons are rooted in saving the world," Sara notes. "Mining practices has appropriated the language of sustainability, but nonetheless it's just striving to find more suitable ways to persist in practices of use."

Individual Conflicts

She and her relatives have personally disagreed with the Norwegian government over its increasingly stringent rules on animal husbandry. In 2016, Sara's brother undertook a series of unsuccessful court actions over the forced culling of his herd, apparently to stop vegetation depletion. As a show of solidarity, Sara developed a four-year collection of creations named Pile O'Sápmi including a huge curtain of numerous cranial remains, which was shown at the 2017 event Documenta 14 and later obtained by the National Museum of Oslo, where it hangs in the entrance.

Creative Expression as Activism

For numerous Indigenous people, visual expression seems the sole sphere in which they can be heard by the global community. Recently, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|