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Visitors to the renowned gallery are accustomed to unexpected experiences in its expansive Turbine Hall. They've relaxed under an simulated sun, descended down amusement rides, and witnessed robotic sea creatures hovering through the air. However this marks the initial time they will be venturing themselves in the complex nasal chambers of a reindeer. The latest artist commission for this cavernous space—designed by Indigenous Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—welcomes gallerygoers into a maze-like design inspired by the expanded inside of a reindeer's nose passages. Inside, they can stroll around or chill out on pelts, tuning in on headphones to tribal seniors telling narratives and insights.

Why the Nose?

Why the nose? It may sound playful, but the installation honors a rarely recognized biological feat: experts have uncovered that in less than one second, the reindeer's nose can heat the surrounding air it breathes in by 80°C, helping the animal to endure in harsh Arctic conditions. Scaling the nose to human-scale dimensions, Sara says, "creates a sense of inferiority that you as a person are not in control over nature." The artist is a former writer, writer for kids, and environmental activist, who comes from a herding family in the Norwegian Arctic. "Possibly that creates the possibility to alter your perspective or trigger some modesty," she continues.

A Celebration to Sámi Culture

The maze-like design is part of a components in Sara's immersive art project honoring the traditions, knowledge, and philosophy of the Sámi, the sole native group in Europe. Partially migratory, the Sámi total roughly 100,000 people spread across northern Norway, the Finnish Arctic, Sweden, and the Kola region (an region they call Sápmi). They've faced oppression, integration policies, and suppression of their dialect by all four states. Through highlighting the reindeer, an creature at the core of the Sámi cosmology and founding narrative, the art also spotlights the people's issues associated with the environmental emergency, property rights, and imperialism.

Meaning in Components

Along the lengthy access ramp, there's a soaring, eighty-five-foot sculpture of pelts ensnared by power and light cables. It represents a analogy for the governance and financial structures limiting the Sámi. Like an electrical tower, part heavenly staircase, this section of the artwork, titled Goavve-, points to the Sámi word for an extreme weather phenomenon, in which dense layers of ice appear as varying temperatures melt and ice over the snow, locking in the reindeers' key cold-season sustenance, fungus. Goavvi is a outcome of climate change, which is occurring up to much more rapidly in the Polar region than elsewhere.

Three years ago, I visited Sara in a remote town during a severe cold period and joined Sámi pastoralists on their Arctic vehicles in biting cold as they transported carts of animal nutrition on to the exposed Arctic plains to provide by hand. These animals gathered round us, pawing the slippery ground in vain for lichen-covered bits. This expensive and laborious method is having a drastic influence on reindeer husbandry—and on the animals' independence. However the choice is starvation. As these icy periods become routine, reindeer are perishing—a number from hunger, others suffocating after falling into lakes and rivers through prematurely melting ice. To some extent, the installation is a memorial to them. "Through the stacking of elements, in a way I'm bringing the condition to London," says Sara.

Opposing Worldviews

The installation also highlights the sharp contrast between the western interpretation of energy as a resource to be harnessed for gain and livelihood and the Sámi philosophy of vitality as an natural power in creatures, people, and land. Tate Modern's history as a coal and oil power station is tied up in this, as is what the Sámi view as green colonialism by Nordic countries. While attempting to be leaders for renewable energy, Nordic nations have disagreed with the Sámi over the development of windfarms, river barriers, and digging operations on their ancestral land; the Sámi argue their legal protections, ways of life, and culture are at risk. "It's challenging being such a small minority to protect your rights when the justifications are rooted in saving the world," Sara observes. "Extractivism has adopted the discourse of environmentalism, but nonetheless it's just attempting to find better ways to persist in patterns of use."

Family Challenges

Sara and her kin have personally disagreed with the Norwegian government over its increasingly stringent regulations on herding. In 2016, Sara's brother undertook a series of finally failed lawsuits over the forced culling of his livestock, supposedly to stop overgrazing. In support, Sara created a four-year collection of pieces called Pile O'Sápmi comprising a colossal curtain of numerous cranial remains, which was shown at the the show Documenta 14 and later purchased by the public gallery, where it is displayed in the entryway.

Creative Expression as Awareness

Among the community, visual expression is the exclusive sphere in which they can be understood by outsiders. Two years ago, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|