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Attendees to the renowned gallery are accustomed to surprising encounters in its expansive Turbine Hall. They've basked under an simulated sun, descended down amusement rides, and witnessed robotic jellyfish drifting through the air. However this marks the initial time they will be engaging themselves in the intricate nose cavities of a reindeer. The current artist commission for this cavernous space—designed by Native Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—encourages visitors into a labyrinthine construction based on the expanded interior of a reindeer's nose cavities. Once inside, they can stroll around or relax on pelts, tuning in on earphones to tribal seniors telling tales and knowledge.

The Significance of the Nose

Why the nose? It might appear whimsical, but the installation pays tribute to a obscure biological feat: researchers have discovered that in a fraction of a second, the reindeer's nose can raise the temperature of the surrounding air it inhales by 80°C, helping the creature to endure in inhospitable Arctic conditions. Expanding the nose to human-scale dimensions, Sara says, "generates a sense of insignificance that you as a individual are not in control over nature." She is a ex- writer, writer for kids, and land defender, who comes from a pastoral family in the far north of Norway. "Maybe that creates the possibility to alter your perspective or evoke some modesty," she adds.

A Tribute to Indigenous Heritage

The winding design is one of several features in Sara's immersive art project honoring the traditions, knowledge, and philosophy of the Sámi, the continent's original inhabitants. Traditionally mobile, the Sámi total roughly 100,000 people ranged across northern Norway, Finland, the Swedish Lapland, and the Russian Arctic (an region they call Sápmi). They have experienced oppression, integration policies, and repression of their tongue by all four states. By focusing on the reindeer, an creature at the heart of the Sámi mythology and founding narrative, the installation also highlights the people's challenges relating to the climate crisis, property rights, and colonialism.

Meaning in Elements

On the lengthy entry incline, there's a soaring, 26-metre formation of pelts trapped by power and light cables. It serves as a metaphor for the societal frameworks restricting the Sámi. Partly a utility pole, part celestial ladder, this part of the artwork, titled Goavve-, points to the Sámi name for an harsh environmental condition, in which solid layers of ice develop as fluctuating weather melt and ice over the snow, locking in the reindeers' primary cold-season nourishment, fungus. This phenomenon is a outcome of climate change, which is occurring up to much more rapidly in the Arctic than in other regions.

Three years ago, I visited Sara in Guovdageaidnu during a icy season and joined Sámi pastoralists on their snowmobiles in freezing temperatures as they hauled containers of animal nutrition on to the wind-scoured frozen landscape to dispense through labor. The reindeer gathered round us, pawing the slippery ground in futility for mossy morsels. This expensive and demanding method is having a drastic influence on reindeer husbandry—and on the animals' natural survival. But the alternative is malnutrition. When such conditions become commonplace, reindeer are dying—a number from hunger, others suffocating after falling into lakes and rivers through unstable frozen surfaces. To some extent, the installation is a tribute to them. "With the layering of materials, in a way I'm transporting the goavvi to London," says Sara.

Opposing Worldviews

The installation also emphasizes the stark divergence between the industrial understanding of electricity as a asset to be exploited for profit and livelihood and the Sámi worldview of energy as an natural power in animals, individuals, and the environment. Tate Modern's history as a coal and oil power station is connected to this, as is what the Sámi consider green colonialism by regional governments. In their efforts to be leaders for clean sources, these states have clashed with the Sámi over the construction of wind energy projects, hydroelectric dams, and extraction sites on their native soil; the Sámi assert their legal protections, incomes, and traditions are threatened. "It's hard being such a limited population to stand your ground when the reasons are grounded in environmental protection," Sara observes. "Extractivism has adopted the rhetoric of ecology, but yet it's just striving to find alternative ways to continue habits of use."

Individual Challenges

The artist and her family have personally clashed with the national administration over its tightening policies on animal husbandry. In 2016, Sara's brother embarked on a sequence of ultimately unsuccessful legal cases over the mandatory slaughter of his herd, supposedly to stop vegetation depletion. To back him, Sara created a multi-year collection of pieces titled Pile O'Sápmi featuring a huge curtain of four hundred reindeer skulls, which was displayed at the 2017's event Documenta 14 and later obtained by the public gallery, where it resides in the lobby.

Art as Awareness

For many Sámi, visual expression seems the exclusive realm in which they can be heard by the global community. Recently, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|