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Visitors to the renowned gallery are used to unusual experiences in its vast Turbine Hall. They've basked under an simulated sun, slid down helter skelters, and seen automated sea creatures hovering through the air. But this marks the first time they will be engaging themselves in the detailed nose passages of a reindeer. The current artist commission for this cavernous space—developed by Native Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—welcomes patrons into a winding construction inspired by the enlarged interior of a reindeer's nose passages. Inside, they can stroll around or chill out on skins, tuning in on earphones to community leaders imparting stories and wisdom.

Why the Nose?

Why choose the nasal structure? It might appear playful, but the exhibit celebrates a obscure biological feat: experts have found that in under a second, the reindeer's nose can heat the incoming air it takes in by 80 degrees celsius, enabling the animal to survive in extreme Arctic climates. Enlarging the nose to larger than human size, Sara says, "produces a perception of inferiority that you as a individual are not in control over nature." The artist is a former journalist, young adult author, and environmental activist, who hails from a reindeer-herding family in northern Norway. "Possibly that fosters the potential to change your viewpoint or trigger some modesty," she adds.

A Tribute to Traditional Ways

The winding design is part of a features in Sara's engaging exhibition honoring the heritage, understanding, and beliefs of the Sámi, the continent's original inhabitants. Partially migratory, the Sámi count about 100,000 people ranged across the Norwegian north, Finland, the Swedish Lapland, and Russia's Kola Peninsula (an region they call Sápmi). They have endured discrimination, cultural suppression, and suppression of their dialect by all four states. By focusing on the reindeer, an creature at the heart of the Sámi mythology and origin tale, the work also highlights the group's struggles connected to the environmental emergency, property rights, and colonialism.

Meaning in Elements

At the lengthy entrance ramp, there's a soaring, eighty-five-foot formation of skins trapped by electrical wires. It can be read as a symbol for the societal frameworks constraining the Sámi. Part pylon, part spiritual ascent, this component of the installation, called Goavve-, points to the Sámi word for an severe climatic event, whereby solid layers of ice appear as fluctuating conditions liquefy and solidify again the snow, trapping the reindeers' key winter food, lichen. Goavvi is a result of planetary warming, which is taking place up to much more rapidly in the Arctic than elsewhere.

Previously, I traveled to see Sara in a remote town during a goavvi winter and joined Sámi herders on their motorized sleds in freezing temperatures as they carried containers of supplementary feed on to the wind-scoured tundra to distribute by hand. The reindeer surrounded round us, scratching the icy ground in vain attempts for mossy pieces. This resource-intensive and demanding method is having a significant impact on herding practices—and on the animals' self-sufficiency. Yet the other option is starvation. As goavvi winters become commonplace, reindeer are dying—some from hunger, others drowning after sinking in water bodies through thinning ice sheets. In a sense, the installation is a monument to them. "Through the stacking of components, in a way I'm bringing the goavvi to London," says Sara.

Opposing Belief Systems

The installation also emphasizes the stark contrast between the modern understanding of power as a commodity to be harnessed for profit and livelihood and the Sámi outlook of life force as an inherent essence in creatures, individuals, and nature. Tate Modern's history as a industrial facility is connected to this, as is what the Sámi view as eco-imperialism by Scandinavian states. While attempting to be leaders for sustainable power, Scandinavian countries have clashed with the Sámi over the building of wind energy projects, river barriers, and extraction sites on their ancestral land; the Sámi assert their legal protections, ways of life, and culture are threatened. "It's very difficult being such a tiny group to defend yourself when the arguments are rooted in saving the world," Sara notes. "Resource exploitation has appropriated the discourse of environmentalism, but still it's just striving to find more suitable ways to continue habits of expenditure."

Individual Conflicts

She and her relatives have themselves disagreed with the Norwegian government over its tightening rules on herding. In 2016, Sara's sibling embarked on a series of unsuccessful lawsuits over the forced culling of his livestock, ostensibly to stop overgrazing. To back him, Sara developed a extended series of artworks titled Pile O'Sápmi comprising a huge drape of 400 reindeer skulls, which was displayed at the 2017 art exhibition Documenta 14 and later acquired by the National Museum of Oslo, where it is displayed in the entrance.

Art as Advocacy

For numerous Indigenous people, visual expression appears the exclusive sphere in which they can be heard by the global community. Two years ago, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|