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Attendees to the renowned gallery are used to unusual encounters in its expansive Turbine Hall. They have sunbathed under an artificial sun, glided down amusement rides, and seen robotic jellyfish floating through the air. However this marks the inaugural time they will be engaging themselves in the intricate nose passages of a reindeer. The latest artist commission for this huge space—designed by Native Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—encourages visitors into a winding design inspired by the enlarged interior of a reindeer's nasal airways. Inside, they can meander around or chill out on pelts, tuning in on headphones to community leaders telling tales and insights.

Focus on the Nasal Passages

Why choose the nasal structure? It might sound quirky, but the exhibit honors a obscure scientific wonder: researchers have found that in a fraction of a second, the reindeer's nose can raise the temperature of the surrounding air it takes in by eighty degrees, enabling the animal to survive in harsh Arctic temperatures. Enlarging the nose to bigger than a person, Sara notes, "creates a perception of inferiority that you as a human being are not in control over nature." Sara is a ex- reporter, young adult author, and rights advocate, who comes from a herding family in the far north of Norway. "Maybe that fosters the possibility to shift your perspective or spark some modesty," she continues.

A Celebration to Sámi Culture

The labyrinthine structure is one of several components in Sara's absorbing art project celebrating the traditions, knowledge, and worldview of the Sámi, Europe's only Indigenous people. Traditionally mobile, the Sámi count roughly 100,000 people distributed across the Norwegian north, the Finnish Arctic, the Swedish Lapland, and the Russian Arctic (an territory they call Sápmi). They have endured persecution, integration policies, and repression of their language by all four nations. Through highlighting the reindeer, an animal at the center of the Sámi mythology and origin tale, the work also spotlights the people's challenges associated with the environmental emergency, property rights, and imperialism.

Symbolism in Elements

On the extended entrance slope, there's a looming, 26-meter sculpture of skins trapped by power and light cables. It can be read as a symbol for the societal frameworks constraining the Sámi. Like an electrical tower, part spiritual ascent, this part of the installation, called Goavve-, relates to the Sámi name for an harsh environmental condition, wherein dense layers of ice appear as changing conditions liquefy and ice over the snow, trapping the reindeers' primary cold-season nourishment, moss. Goavvi is a result of climate change, which is taking place up to much more rapidly in the Polar region than in other regions.

Three years ago, I traveled to see Sara in a remote town during a icy season and went with Sámi pastoralists on their snowmobiles in chilly conditions as they transported trailers of supplementary feed on to the barren frozen landscape to provide manually. The herd crowded round us, pawing the slippery ground in vain for lichen-covered pieces. This costly and labour-intensive process is having a severe effect on animal rearing—and on the animals' self-sufficiency. Yet the other option is starvation. When such conditions become frequent, reindeer are perishing—some from starvation, others suffocating after plunging into streams through thinning ice sheets. To some extent, the art is a tribute to them. "By overlapping of elements, in a way I'm bringing the goavvi to London," says Sara.

Contrasting Belief Systems

This artwork also emphasizes the sharp difference between the industrial view of electricity as a resource to be harnessed for gain and livelihood and the Sámi worldview of energy as an innate life force in creatures, humans, and the environment. Tate Modern's legacy as a fossil fuel plant is linked with this, as is what the Sámi view as eco-imperialism by regional governments. As they strive to be leaders for renewable energy, Scandinavian countries have locked horns with the Sámi over the construction of wind energy projects, river barriers, and extraction sites on their native soil; the Sámi contend their human rights, ways of life, and culture are endangered. "It's challenging being such a tiny group to defend yourself when the arguments are grounded in saving the world," Sara observes. "Extractivism has adopted the language of ecology, but yet it's just striving to find alternative ways to persist in practices of use."

Personal Struggles

She and her kin have themselves disagreed with the Norwegian government over its tightening regulations on reindeer management. Previously, Sara's brother initiated a sequence of ultimately unsuccessful legal cases over the required reduction of his animals, apparently to stop excessive feeding. As a show of solidarity, Sara developed a four-year set of creations called Pile O'Sápmi comprising a massive curtain of four hundred reindeer skulls, which was displayed at the 2017 show Documenta 14 and later purchased by the national institution, where it resides in the lobby.

Art as Awareness

For many Sámi, visual expression seems the exclusive sphere in which they can be understood by outsiders. Recently, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|