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Attendees to the renowned gallery are familiar to surprising encounters in its vast Turbine Hall. They have relaxed under an simulated sun, descended down amusement rides, and observed automated sea creatures floating through the air. Yet this marks the inaugural time they will be venturing themselves in the complex nose chambers of a reindeer. The latest artistic project for this cavernous space—designed by Native Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—encourages gallerygoers into a maze-like construction based on the expanded inside of a reindeer's nasal passages. Once inside, they can stroll around or chill out on pelts, listening on headphones to Sámi elders imparting stories and insights.

Why the Nose?

What's the focus on the nose? It may seem whimsical, but the installation celebrates a obscure natural marvel: researchers have uncovered that in less than one second, the reindeer's nose can heat the ambient air it inhales by eighty degrees, helping the animal to thrive in harsh Arctic climates. Enlarging the nose to human-scale dimensions, Sara says, "generates a perception of insignificance that you as a person are not dominant over nature." The artist is a former journalist, writer for kids, and land defender, who comes from a pastoral family in the Norwegian Arctic. "Perhaps that generates the potential to shift your perspective or trigger some humility," she adds.

A Tribute to Sámi Culture

The labyrinthine installation is among various features in Sara's immersive exhibition showcasing the culture, knowledge, and worldview of the Sámi, Europe's only Indigenous people. Partially migratory, the Sámi count about 100,000 people distributed across the Norwegian north, the Finnish Arctic, the Swedish Lapland, and the Russian Arctic (an region they call Sápmi). They've faced persecution, forced assimilation, and suppression of their dialect by all four countries. Through highlighting the reindeer, an creature at the heart of the Sámi belief system and founding narrative, the art also spotlights the people's issues associated with the global warming, land dispossession, and external control.

Metaphor in Materials

At the lengthy entrance incline, there's a looming, 26-metre structure of reindeer hides entangled by power and light cables. It can be read as a symbol for the societal frameworks constraining the Sámi. Partly a utility pole, part celestial ladder, this part of the exhibit, titled Goavve-, relates to the Sámi name for an severe climatic event, wherein dense layers of ice form as fluctuating weather liquefy and ice over the snow, locking in the reindeers' primary winter nourishment, fungus. This phenomenon is a result of planetary warming, which is happening up to much more rapidly in the Far North than elsewhere.

Previously, I met with Sara in a remote town during a severe cold period and joined Sámi herders on their motorized sleds in chilly conditions as they carried trailers of food pellets on to the barren tundra to provide through labor. The reindeer crowded round us, pawing the frozen ground in futility for vegetative pieces. This resource-intensive and laborious procedure is having a severe impact on reindeer husbandry—and on the animals' self-sufficiency. However the alternative is death. As these icy periods become routine, reindeer are succumbing—a number from lack of food, others drowning after plunging into water bodies through unstable frozen surfaces. On one level, the installation is a tribute to them. "By overlapping of components, in a way I'm bringing the phenomenon to London," says Sara.

Diverging Perspectives

The sculpture also emphasizes the sharp contrast between the industrial view of energy as a resource to be exploited for gain and survival and the Sámi philosophy of energy as an natural essence 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 consider eco-imperialism by regional governments. While attempting to be leaders for renewable energy, Nordic nations have clashed with the Sámi over the construction of windfarms, water power facilities, and digging operations on their native soil; the Sámi argue their legal protections, ways of life, and culture are threatened. "It's challenging being such a small minority to defend yourself when the arguments are based on global sustainability," Sara comments. "Extractivism has appropriated the discourse of environmentalism, but still it's just striving to find better ways to continue patterns of expenditure."

Family Struggles

She and her relatives have themselves disagreed with the Norwegian government over its increasingly stringent policies on animal husbandry. A few years ago, Sara's sibling undertook a sequence of unsuccessful legal cases over the mandatory slaughter of his livestock, ostensibly to stop vegetation depletion. To back him, Sara produced a four-year series of creations named Pile O'Sápmi featuring a huge curtain of numerous animal bones, which was displayed at the the art exhibition Documenta 14 and later acquired by the public gallery, where it hangs in the entrance.

Art as Activism

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