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Visitors to the renowned gallery are familiar to surprising displays in its expansive Turbine Hall. They've relaxed under an simulated sun, slid down helter skelters, and seen AI-powered sea creatures drifting through the air. However this marks the first time they will be venturing themselves in the detailed nose passages of a reindeer. The current artist commission for this huge space—designed by Indigenous Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—encourages gallerygoers into a labyrinthine design inspired by the scaled-up inside of a reindeer's nasal cavities. Once inside, they can wander around or relax on skins, tuning in on headphones to tribal seniors sharing tales and wisdom.

Why the Nose?

What's the focus on the nose? It might appear whimsical, but the installation pays tribute to a little-known natural marvel: experts have discovered that in less than one second, the reindeer's nose can raise the temperature of the ambient air it inhales by 80°C, helping the animal to thrive in harsh Arctic conditions. Expanding the nose to larger than human size, Sara notes, "generates a perception of smallness that you as a individual are not in control over nature." The artist is a former writer, young adult author, and environmental activist, who is from a herding family in the Norwegian Arctic. "Perhaps that creates the potential to shift your viewpoint or trigger some humbleness," she continues.

A Celebration to Sámi Culture

The maze-like structure is part of a elements in Sara's absorbing art project honoring the heritage, knowledge, and philosophy of the Sámi, Europe's only Indigenous people. Semi-nomadic, the Sámi count roughly 100,000 people spread across northern Norway, Finland, Sweden, and the Kola region (an area they call Sápmi). They've endured oppression, forced assimilation, and suppression of their tongue by all four states. Through highlighting the reindeer, an creature at the core of the Sámi belief system and origin tale, the art also spotlights the community's challenges relating to the environmental emergency, loss of territory, and colonialism.

Meaning in Elements

At the long access incline, there's a soaring, 26-metre sculpture of pelts ensnared by electrical wires. It serves as a analogy for the governance and financial structures constraining the Sámi. Part pylon, part celestial ladder, this component of the exhibit, named Goavve-, points to the Sámi name for an severe climatic event, wherein solid coatings of ice develop as varying weather liquefy and ice over the snow, encasing the reindeers' main winter nourishment, moss. Goavvi is a result of global heating, which is taking place up to at an accelerated rate in the Far North than elsewhere.

A few years back, I met with Sara in a remote town during a goavvi winter and accompanied Sámi reindeer keepers on their snowmobiles in chilly conditions as they hauled carts of food pellets on to the exposed Arctic plains to provide manually. The reindeer gathered round us, scratching the frozen ground in futility for vegetative morsels. This costly and labour-intensive method is having a significant effect on herding practices—and on the animals' natural survival. However the choice is death. When such conditions become commonplace, reindeer are succumbing—some from starvation, others submerging after sinking in water bodies through unstable frozen surfaces. To some extent, the art is a monument to them. "By overlapping of materials, in a way I'm bringing the goavvi to London," says Sara.

Contrasting Worldviews

The sculpture also underscores the stark contrast between the modern interpretation of energy as a resource to be exploited for gain and survival and the Sámi outlook of vitality as an innate power in creatures, people, and the environment. Tate Modern's history 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 standard bearers for renewable energy, Scandinavian countries have disagreed with the Sámi over the building of windfarms, water power facilities, and mines on their native soil; the Sámi contend their legal protections, incomes, and culture are at risk. "It's very difficult being such a tiny group to protect your rights when the reasons are grounded in environmental protection," Sara comments. "Resource exploitation has adopted the language of environmentalism, but yet it's just aiming to find more suitable ways to continue habits of expenditure."

Personal Challenges

She and her relatives have themselves clashed with the Norwegian government over its increasingly stringent policies on animal husbandry. A few years ago, Sara's brother embarked on a sequence of finally failed court actions over the mandatory slaughter of his animals, supposedly to stop vegetation depletion. As a show of solidarity, Sara developed a extended set of creations titled Pile O'Sápmi featuring a colossal curtain of 400 animal bones, which was shown at the the art exhibition Documenta 14 and later obtained by the national institution, where it is displayed in the entryway.

Creative Expression as Awareness

Among the community, art appears the only realm in which they can be heard by outsiders. Two years ago, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|