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Visitors to the renowned gallery are accustomed to unusual experiences in its spacious Turbine Hall. They've basked under an artificial sun, glided down amusement rides, and seen AI-powered jellyfish hovering through the air. But this marks the first time they will be engaging themselves in the complex nose cavities of a reindeer. The current creative installation for this immense space—created by Native Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—welcomes patrons into a labyrinthine design based on the scaled-up inside of a reindeer's nasal airways. Upon entering, they can meander around or unwind on skins, tuning in on earphones to Sámi elders sharing narratives and knowledge.

Why the Nose?

What's the focus on the nose? It could appear playful, but the exhibit pays tribute to a obscure biological feat: scientists have uncovered that in less than one second, the reindeer's nose can raise the temperature of the surrounding air it breathes in by 80 degrees celsius, enabling the creature to survive in inhospitable Arctic conditions. Enlarging the nose to human-scale dimensions, Sara notes, "creates a perception of smallness that you as a person are not dominant over nature." The artist is a former reporter, young adult author, and land defender, who comes from a reindeer-herding family in the far north of Norway. "Perhaps that generates the potential to shift your perspective or trigger some humility," she continues.

A Celebration to Indigenous Heritage

The winding structure is one of several components in Sara's absorbing exhibition celebrating the heritage, knowledge, and beliefs of the Sámi, the sole native group in Europe. Semi-nomadic, the Sámi total about 100,000 people spread across northern Norway, Finland, Sweden, and Russia's Kola Peninsula (an area they call Sápmi). They've experienced persecution, integration policies, and suppression of their dialect by all four countries. By focusing on the reindeer, an animal at the core of the Sámi cosmology and founding narrative, the art also spotlights the community's issues associated with the global warming, land dispossession, and colonialism.

Symbolism in Materials

Along the long access incline, there's a looming, 26-meter formation of pelts ensnared by utility lines. It represents a symbol for the governance and financial structures constraining the Sámi. Part pylon, part heavenly staircase, this section of the exhibit, called Goavve-, points to the Sámi word for an severe climatic event, wherein solid sheets of ice form as changing weather liquefy and ice over the snow, encasing the reindeers' key winter food, fungus. This phenomenon is a consequence of global heating, which is happening up to at an accelerated rate in the Far North than elsewhere.

A few years back, I visited Sara in the Norwegian far north during a icy season and accompanied Sámi herders on their Arctic vehicles in biting cold as they hauled containers of food pellets on to the wind-scoured frozen landscape to dispense by hand. The herd gathered round us, pawing the frozen ground in vain for mossy pieces. This resource-intensive and demanding method is having a severe influence on herding practices—and on the animals' self-sufficiency. But the choice is malnutrition. As these icy periods become routine, reindeer are succumbing—some from hunger, others submerging after falling into streams through unstable frozen surfaces. On one level, the art is a memorial to them. "By overlapping of elements, in a way I'm transporting the phenomenon to London," says Sara.

Diverging Perspectives

This artwork also emphasizes the stark difference between the western interpretation of energy as a resource to be utilized for economic benefit and survival and the Sámi outlook of life force as an inherent power in animals, individuals, and nature. Tate Modern's past as a fossil fuel plant is linked with this, as is what the Sámi see as eco-imperialism by Scandinavian states. In their efforts to be leaders for renewable energy, Scandinavian countries have disagreed with the Sámi over the construction of windfarms, river barriers, and digging operations on their ancestral land; the Sámi assert their legal protections, ways of life, and culture are endangered. "It's challenging being such a small minority to protect your rights when the justifications are based on global sustainability," Sara notes. "Mining practices has adopted the discourse of sustainability, but yet it's just attempting to find more suitable ways to continue practices of consumption."

Family Conflicts

Sara and her family have personally disagreed with the Norwegian government over its ever-stricter policies on animal husbandry. In 2016, Sara's sibling undertook a sequence of unsuccessful lawsuits over the required reduction of his livestock, apparently to stop excessive feeding. To back him, Sara produced a four-year set of creations named Pile O'Sápmi comprising a huge curtain of four hundred reindeer skulls, which was exhibited at the 2017 event Documenta 14 and later obtained by the National Museum of Oslo, where it hangs in the entryway.

Art as Awareness

For numerous Indigenous people, creative work is the exclusive sphere in which they can be heard by people of other nations. Two years ago, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|