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Visitors to the renowned gallery are used to unexpected encounters in its spacious Turbine Hall. They have relaxed under an man-made sun, descended down spiral slides, and seen automated jellyfish floating through the air. But this marks the first time they will be venturing themselves in the detailed nose passages of a reindeer. The current artist commission for this huge space—developed by Indigenous Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—invites visitors into a maze-like construction inspired by the enlarged inside of a reindeer's nasal cavities. Inside, they can wander around or relax on reindeer hides, listening on earphones to tribal seniors sharing narratives and wisdom.

Focus on the Nasal Passages

Why the nose? It could seem quirky, but the artwork pays tribute to a little-known natural marvel: scientists have found that in under a second, the reindeer's nose can heat the ambient air it takes in by 80 degrees celsius, enabling the creature to survive in inhospitable Arctic climates. Enlarging the nose to bigger than a person, Sara notes, "creates a feeling of inferiority that you as a human being are not in control over nature." She is a former writer, children's author, and rights advocate, who is from a herding family in the Norwegian Arctic. "Perhaps that fosters the potential to shift your perspective or evoke some modesty," she states.

A Celebration to Traditional Ways

The labyrinthine design is among various features in Sara's absorbing exhibition honoring the culture, understanding, and philosophy of the Sámi, the sole native group in Europe. Traditionally mobile, the Sámi number roughly 100,000 people distributed across northern Norway, Finland, the Swedish Lapland, and the Russian Arctic (an region they call Sápmi). They've endured persecution, cultural suppression, and suppression of their language by all four states. With an emphasis on the reindeer, an animal at the center of the Sámi belief system and creation story, the work also highlights the group's struggles connected to the climate crisis, property rights, and imperialism.

Meaning in Materials

On the extended access slope, there's a looming, 26-metre structure of skins ensnared by electrical wires. It represents a metaphor for the societal frameworks constraining the Sámi. Part pylon, part heavenly staircase, this section of the exhibit, called Goavve-, relates to the Sámi name for an extreme weather phenomenon, whereby dense sheets of ice form as fluctuating temperatures liquefy and solidify again the snow, locking in the reindeers' primary cold-season food, moss. This phenomenon is a result of planetary warming, which is occurring up to at an accelerated rate in the Arctic than elsewhere.

Three years ago, I traveled to see Sara in a remote town during a goavvi winter and joined Sámi reindeer keepers on their motorized sleds in biting cold as they transported carts of food pellets on to the wind-scoured frozen landscape to provide through labor. These animals surrounded round us, pawing the frozen ground in vain attempts for mossy morsels. This expensive and labour-intensive method is having a drastic impact on herding practices—and on the animals' self-sufficiency. But the alternative is malnutrition. When such conditions become frequent, reindeer are dying—some from starvation, others submerging after sinking in streams through thinning ice sheets. On one level, the installation is a monument to them. "By overlapping of materials, in a way I'm transporting the condition to London," says Sara.

Contrasting Worldviews

The sculpture also highlights the clear difference between the western view of power as a asset to be utilized for economic benefit and existence and the Sámi outlook of vitality as an inherent essence in animals, people, and nature. Tate Modern's past as a fossil fuel plant is linked with this, as is what the Sámi consider environmental exploitation by Scandinavian states. In their efforts to be standard bearers for clean sources, these states have clashed with the Sámi over the development of wind energy projects, river barriers, and mines on their native soil; the Sámi argue their fundamental freedoms, livelihoods, and way of life are at risk. "It's hard being such a small minority to stand your ground when the arguments are based on saving the world," Sara observes. "Mining practices has adopted the rhetoric of environmentalism, but nonetheless it's just striving to find more suitable ways to persist in habits of expenditure."

Family Conflicts

Sara and her kin have themselves disagreed with the national administration over its ever-stricter policies on reindeer management. In 2016, Sara's sibling embarked on a set of finally failed court actions over the required reduction of his animals, supposedly to stop vegetation depletion. To back him, Sara developed a extended set of pieces called Pile O'Sápmi comprising a huge drape of numerous cranial remains, which was exhibited at the 2017's show Documenta 14 and later acquired by the national institution, where it resides in the entryway.

The Role of Art in Awareness

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