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Guests to the renowned gallery are used to surprising displays in its expansive Turbine Hall. They have relaxed under an artificial sun, glided down amusement rides, and observed robotic sea creatures floating through the air. However this marks the first time they will be immersing themselves in the intricate nasal chambers of a reindeer. The current artist commission for this immense space—created by Native Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—welcomes gallerygoers into a maze-like construction modeled after the scaled-up inside of a reindeer's nose cavities. Once inside, they can meander around or unwind on pelts, tuning in on earphones to Sámi elders telling stories and insights.

Focus on the Nasal Passages

What's the focus on the nose? It may appear quirky, but the installation pays tribute to a obscure scientific wonder: scientists have uncovered that in under a second, the reindeer's nose can warm the incoming air it takes in by 80°C, enabling the animal to survive in extreme Arctic conditions. Scaling the nose to human-scale dimensions, Sara says, "generates a sense of insignificance that you as a human being are not superior over nature." Sara is a former journalist, young adult author, and environmental activist, who is from a reindeer-herding family in the Norwegian Arctic. "Possibly that generates the potential to shift your perspective or spark some humility," she continues.

An Homage to Sámi Culture

The maze-like installation is part of a components in Sara's immersive exhibition showcasing the culture, science, and worldview of the Sámi, the sole native group in Europe. Traditionally mobile, the Sámi count roughly 100,000 people distributed across northern Norway, the Finnish Arctic, Sweden, and the Russian Arctic (an region they call Sápmi). They've experienced discrimination, forced assimilation, and suppression of their language by all four countries. With an emphasis on the reindeer, an creature at the center of the Sámi cosmology and origin tale, the installation also spotlights the people's struggles relating to the environmental emergency, loss of territory, and colonialism.

Metaphor in Elements

At the extended entry slope, there's a looming, 26-metre structure of skins trapped by utility lines. It can be read as a analogy for the political and economic systems limiting the Sámi. Partly a utility pole, part celestial ladder, this part of the artwork, named Goavve-, points to the Sámi term for an severe climatic event, wherein solid coatings of ice develop as changing conditions melt and solidify again the snow, trapping the reindeers' main cold-season sustenance, lichen. Goavvi is a consequence of global heating, which is taking place up to much more rapidly in the Arctic than globally.

Previously, I traveled to see Sara in a remote town during a severe cold period and joined Sámi reindeer keepers on their motorized sleds in chilly conditions as they carried trailers of food pellets on to the wind-scoured Arctic plains to provide through labor. These animals gathered round us, digging the frozen ground in vain for mossy morsels. This expensive and laborious method is having a drastic impact on animal rearing—and on the animals' independence. However the alternative is death. As goavvi winters become frequent, reindeer are dying—some from hunger, others submerging after sinking in streams through prematurely melting ice. To some extent, 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 Belief Systems

This artwork also highlights the sharp difference between the industrial interpretation of electricity as a commodity to be harnessed for economic benefit and survival and the Sámi worldview of vitality as an innate essence in creatures, people, and the environment. Tate Modern's legacy as a fossil fuel plant is linked with this, as is what the Sámi see as eco-imperialism by Scandinavian states. While attempting to be leaders for sustainable power, these states have locked horns with the Sámi over the construction of turbine fields, hydroelectric dams, and extraction sites on their traditional territory; the Sámi assert their human rights, incomes, and traditions are at risk. "It's hard being such a tiny group to defend yourself when the arguments are grounded in saving the world," Sara observes. "Extractivism has adopted the rhetoric of ecology, but nonetheless it's just attempting to find alternative ways to maintain patterns of use."

Personal Challenges

She and her relatives have themselves clashed with the national administration over its ever-stricter rules on animal husbandry. In 2016, Sara's sibling undertook a sequence of finally failed legal cases over the mandatory slaughter of his livestock, ostensibly to stop vegetation depletion. As a show of solidarity, Sara produced a four-year set of pieces named Pile O'Sápmi comprising a huge screen of four hundred reindeer skulls, which was displayed at the 2017 event Documenta 14 and later purchased by the public gallery, where it is displayed in the entryway.

Creative Expression as Advocacy

For numerous Indigenous people, visual expression seems the sole domain in which they can be understood by the global community. Recently, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|