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Guests to the renowned gallery are accustomed to unexpected displays in its expansive Turbine Hall. They have relaxed under an simulated sun, descended down amusement rides, and seen automated sea creatures drifting through the air. However this marks the first time they will be engaging themselves in the detailed nasal chambers of a reindeer. The latest artistic project for this immense space—created by Indigenous Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—encourages patrons into a winding construction inspired by the expanded interior of a reindeer's nose airways. Upon entering, they can meander around or relax on pelts, listening on headphones to tribal seniors imparting tales and insights.

Why the Nose?

Why the nose? It might sound quirky, but the exhibit celebrates a rarely recognized scientific wonder: experts have found that in a fraction of a second, the reindeer's nose can warm the incoming air it takes in by eighty degrees, helping the animal to endure in inhospitable Arctic conditions. Scaling the nose to larger than human size, Sara says, "produces a feeling of insignificance that you as a person are not dominant over nature." She is a former reporter, young adult author, and rights advocate, who is from a pastoral family in the far north of Norway. "Perhaps that creates the potential to alter your outlook or evoke some humbleness," she continues.

A Tribute to Traditional Ways

The labyrinthine design is among various components in Sara's absorbing commission celebrating the culture, understanding, and beliefs of the Sámi, the continent's original inhabitants. Partially migratory, the Sámi number approximately 100,000 people ranged across northern Norway, Finland, Sweden, and the Russian Arctic (an region they call Sápmi). They have faced discrimination, integration policies, and repression of their tongue by all four states. With an emphasis on the reindeer, an animal at the core of the Sámi cosmology and creation story, the work also highlights the group's struggles relating to the environmental emergency, loss of territory, and colonialism.

Metaphor in Materials

Along the extended entry ramp, there's a soaring, eighty-five-foot structure of skins trapped by electrical wires. It serves as a analogy for the governance and financial structures restricting the Sámi. Part pylon, part heavenly staircase, this section of the artwork, named Goavve-, relates to the Sámi name for an severe climatic event, wherein thick sheets of ice form as varying conditions melt and solidify again the snow, encasing the reindeers' main cold-season food, lichen. Goavvi is a consequence of global heating, which is taking place up to four times faster in the Arctic than globally.

Three years ago, I visited Sara in a remote town during a goavvi winter and went with Sámi herders on their motorized sleds in chilly conditions as they carried containers of supplementary feed on to the exposed frozen landscape to distribute by hand. These animals gathered round us, scratching the frozen ground in vain attempts for lichen-covered morsels. This expensive and demanding process is having a drastic influence on animal rearing—and on the animals' independence. But the other option is death. As these icy periods become frequent, reindeer are succumbing—a number from starvation, others submerging after sinking in 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 bringing the phenomenon to London," says Sara.

Contrasting Belief Systems

The sculpture also underscores the sharp contrast between the western interpretation of energy as a commodity to be harnessed for profit and livelihood and the Sámi worldview of life force as an inherent life force in animals, humans, and nature. Tate Modern's history as a coal and oil power station is tied up in this, as is what the Sámi see as environmental exploitation by Scandinavian states. In their efforts to be leaders for renewable energy, Scandinavian countries have disagreed with the Sámi over the development of windfarms, hydroelectric dams, and extraction sites on their traditional territory; the Sámi assert their legal protections, ways of life, and culture are at risk. "It's hard being such a small minority to protect your rights when the reasons are grounded in global sustainability," Sara notes. "Mining practices has appropriated the language of ecology, but nonetheless it's just attempting to find alternative ways to continue patterns of consumption."

Personal Challenges

She and her kin have themselves conflicted with the Norwegian government over its tightening rules on reindeer management. In 2016, Sara's brother embarked on a sequence of finally failed legal cases over the required reduction of his herd, ostensibly to stop vegetation depletion. In support, Sara created a extended series of pieces called Pile O'Sápmi including a massive curtain of four hundred cranial remains, which was shown at the 2017 event Documenta 14 and later acquired by the national institution, where it resides in the lobby.

The Role of Art in Awareness

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