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Visitors to the renowned gallery are familiar to unusual displays in its vast Turbine Hall. They've sunbathed under an simulated sun, glided down helter skelters, and observed robotic jellyfish hovering through the air. However this marks the inaugural time they will be venturing themselves in the detailed nose passages of a reindeer. The latest artistic project for this huge space—designed by Native Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—invites visitors into a maze-like construction inspired by the expanded inside of a reindeer's nose airways. Upon entering, they can stroll around or relax on skins, listening on earphones to tribal seniors telling stories and wisdom.

The Significance of the Nose

What's the focus on the nose? It may seem whimsical, but the installation pays tribute to a obscure natural marvel: scientists have discovered that in under a second, the reindeer's nose can warm the surrounding air it takes in by 80 degrees celsius, allowing the creature to survive in harsh Arctic climates. Enlarging the nose to larger than human size, Sara explains, "produces a feeling of inferiority that you as a human being are not superior over nature." She is a former journalist, young adult author, and environmental activist, who is from a pastoral family in the Norwegian Arctic. "Possibly that creates the possibility to change your outlook or trigger some humility," she states.

A Celebration to Sámi Culture

The winding structure is part of a components in Sara's engaging commission honoring the traditions, science, and worldview of the Sámi, Europe's only Indigenous people. Partially migratory, the Sámi total roughly 100,000 people distributed across the Norwegian north, the Finnish Arctic, the Swedish Lapland, and Russia's Kola Peninsula (an region they call Sápmi). They've faced oppression, forced assimilation, and repression of their language by all four states. With an emphasis on the reindeer, an creature at the center of the Sámi cosmology and founding narrative, the art also spotlights the people's challenges associated with the global warming, property rights, and external control.

Metaphor in Components

At the lengthy entry ramp, there's a looming, 26-meter structure of skins trapped by electrical wires. It can be read as a analogy for the societal frameworks constraining the Sámi. Part pylon, part celestial ladder, this part of the installation, titled Goavve-, refers to the Sámi word for an severe climatic event, whereby dense sheets of ice form as changing conditions liquefy and refreeze the snow, encasing the reindeers' primary winter food, moss. This phenomenon is a consequence of global heating, which is occurring up to at an accelerated rate in the Far North than elsewhere.

Previously, I traveled to see Sara in Guovdageaidnu during a icy season and accompanied Sámi pastoralists on their Arctic vehicles in freezing temperatures as they carried carts of supplementary feed on to the wind-scoured tundra to distribute by hand. These animals gathered round us, pawing the slippery ground in vain for lichen-covered pieces. This expensive and demanding procedure is having a drastic effect on reindeer husbandry—and on the animals' natural survival. Yet the alternative is malnutrition. As these icy periods become routine, reindeer are dying—some from lack of food, others suffocating after plunging into lakes and rivers through unstable frozen surfaces. On one level, the work is a tribute to them. "With the layering of components, in a way I'm bringing the phenomenon to London," says Sara.

Diverging Perspectives

The sculpture also highlights the stark contrast between the western interpretation of energy as a commodity to be utilized for economic benefit and survival and the Sámi outlook of life force as an natural essence in animals, humans, and nature. Tate Modern's history as a coal and oil power station is linked with this, as is what the Sámi view as eco-imperialism by regional governments. In their efforts to be leaders for sustainable power, Scandinavian countries have clashed with the Sámi over the development of windfarms, hydroelectric dams, and mines on their ancestral land; the Sámi argue their legal protections, incomes, and way of life are threatened. "It's hard being such a tiny group to defend yourself when the reasons are based on saving the world," Sara notes. "Resource exploitation has appropriated the discourse of ecology, but nonetheless it's just attempting to find better ways to continue practices of use."

Individual Challenges

She and her family have themselves conflicted with the Norwegian government over its tightening policies on reindeer management. Previously, Sara's sibling embarked on a sequence of unsuccessful legal cases over the required reduction of his herd, apparently to stop vegetation depletion. As a show of solidarity, Sara produced a multi-year set of creations called Pile O'Sápmi including a colossal screen of 400 animal bones, which was exhibited at the 2017's event Documenta 14 and later acquired by the public gallery, where it is displayed in the entrance.

Art as Activism

For many Sámi, creative work seems the exclusive domain in which they can be understood by outsiders. Two years ago, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|