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Guests to the renowned gallery are used to unexpected encounters in its spacious Turbine Hall. They have sunbathed under an simulated sun, glided down helter skelters, and observed AI-powered sea creatures hovering through the air. However this marks the inaugural time they will be immersing themselves in the detailed nasal cavities of a reindeer. The latest creative installation for this huge space—designed by Indigenous Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—welcomes patrons into a winding design modeled after the expanded inside of a reindeer's nasal cavities. Once inside, they can wander around or relax on pelts, listening on earphones to tribal seniors imparting tales and knowledge.

The Significance of the Nose

What's the focus on the nose? It could seem playful, but the artwork pays tribute to a little-known scientific wonder: scientists have uncovered that in a fraction of a second, the reindeer's nose can warm the surrounding air it takes in by 80°C, helping the creature to endure in harsh Arctic climates. Scaling the nose to human-scale dimensions, Sara says, "produces a perception of insignificance that you as a individual are not superior over nature." She is a former journalist, children's author, and environmental activist, who is from a reindeer-herding family in the far north of Norway. "Possibly that generates the potential to shift your outlook or trigger some humility," she continues.

A Celebration to Indigenous Heritage

The maze-like structure is one of several features in Sara's immersive commission celebrating the traditions, understanding, and philosophy of the Sámi, the sole native group in Europe. Partially migratory, the Sámi total roughly 100,000 people spread across northern Norway, Finland, Sweden, and the Russian Arctic (an territory they call Sápmi). They've faced oppression, integration policies, and eradication of their language by all four countries. Through highlighting the reindeer, an creature at the core of the Sámi cosmology and founding narrative, the art also spotlights the community's issues associated with the environmental emergency, land dispossession, and colonialism.

Symbolism in Components

On the extended entrance slope, there's a soaring, 26-metre formation of pelts ensnared by utility lines. It represents a analogy for the political and economic systems limiting the Sámi. Like an electrical tower, part spiritual ascent, this part of the exhibit, named Goavve-, points to the Sámi word for an severe climatic event, whereby solid layers of ice appear as changing conditions thaw and ice over the snow, trapping the reindeers' primary winter nourishment, fungus. The condition is a outcome of planetary warming, which is happening up to at an accelerated rate in the Polar region than globally.

Previously, I traveled to see Sara in Guovdageaidnu during a goavvi winter and went with Sámi pastoralists on their snowmobiles in freezing temperatures as they hauled trailers of supplementary feed on to the barren tundra to provide by hand. The herd crowded round us, digging the slippery ground in futility for vegetative bits. This expensive and laborious method is having a significant impact on reindeer husbandry—and on the animals' natural survival. But the other option is starvation. When such conditions become routine, reindeer are dying—a number from hunger, others drowning after plunging into streams through thinning ice sheets. In a sense, the art is a monument to them. "With the layering of materials, in a way I'm transporting the condition to London," says Sara.

Opposing Belief Systems

The sculpture also emphasizes the sharp contrast between the modern interpretation of energy as a resource to be exploited for profit and existence and the Sámi philosophy of life force as an innate life force in animals, people, and nature. Tate Modern's past as a coal and oil power station is tied up in this, as is what the Sámi see as eco-imperialism by Scandinavian states. While attempting to be standard bearers for clean sources, these states have clashed with the Sámi over the development of wind energy projects, water power facilities, and digging operations on their traditional territory; the Sámi contend their fundamental freedoms, livelihoods, and culture are endangered. "It's hard being such a small minority to protect your rights when the justifications are rooted in saving the world," Sara observes. "Resource exploitation has adopted the rhetoric of sustainability, but nonetheless it's just aiming to find better ways to maintain habits of use."

Individual Challenges

She and her family have themselves clashed with the state authorities over its increasingly stringent regulations on animal husbandry. A few years ago, Sara's brother undertook a set of unsuccessful lawsuits over the mandatory slaughter of his livestock, apparently to stop vegetation depletion. In support, Sara developed a multi-year series of pieces named Pile O'Sápmi including a huge drape of numerous cranial remains, which was displayed at the 2017 event Documenta 14 and later obtained by the public gallery, where it hangs in the lobby.

The Role of Art in Activism

For numerous Indigenous people, art seems the sole realm in which they can be listened to by outsiders. Two years ago, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|