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Attendees to the renowned gallery are used to surprising encounters in its expansive Turbine Hall. They have basked under an simulated sun, glided down amusement rides, and seen automated sea creatures drifting through the air. However this marks the initial time they will be immersing themselves in the complex nose cavities of a reindeer. The newest creative installation for this immense space—designed by Native Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—invites patrons into a maze-like design inspired by the enlarged interior of a reindeer's nose airways. Inside, they can meander around or unwind on skins, tuning in on earphones to community leaders imparting stories and wisdom.

The Significance of the Nose

Why the nose? It could sound whimsical, but the artwork honors a obscure biological feat: experts have discovered that in a fraction of a second, the reindeer's nose can heat the ambient air it takes in by eighty degrees, enabling the animal to survive in harsh Arctic temperatures. Expanding the nose to larger than human size, Sara explains, "creates a sense of inferiority that you as a individual are not dominant over nature." The artist is a former journalist, young adult author, and rights advocate, who is from a herding family in the far north of Norway. "Maybe that creates the potential to shift your perspective or trigger some modesty," she continues.

A Celebration to Indigenous Heritage

The winding design is among various components in Sara's absorbing art project celebrating the traditions, science, and worldview of the Sámi, the continent's original inhabitants. Semi-nomadic, the Sámi number about 100,000 people spread across the Norwegian north, Finland, Sweden, and the Russian Arctic (an region they call Sápmi). They've experienced persecution, forced assimilation, and repression of their tongue by all four nations. With an emphasis on the reindeer, an animal at the core of the Sámi mythology and origin tale, the work also draws attention to the community's challenges connected to the global warming, property rights, and external control.

Metaphor in Elements

At the lengthy access ramp, there's a looming, 26-meter sculpture of pelts ensnared by power and light cables. It can be read as a symbol for the governance and financial structures constraining the Sámi. Partly a utility pole, part celestial ladder, this component of the exhibit, called Goavve-, refers to the Sámi term for an severe climatic event, wherein dense sheets of ice develop as changing temperatures thaw and refreeze the snow, encasing the reindeers' primary cold-season food, fungus. Goavvi is a result of planetary warming, which is happening up to four times faster in the Arctic than elsewhere.

Three years ago, I visited Sara in a remote town during a icy season and went with Sámi reindeer keepers on their snowmobiles in chilly conditions as they carried carts of animal nutrition on to the barren Arctic plains to dispense through labor. The herd crowded round us, pawing the frozen ground in vain attempts for lichen-covered bits. This expensive and labour-intensive method is having a severe influence on herding practices—and on the animals' independence. However the other option is malnutrition. As these icy periods become commonplace, reindeer are dying—some from hunger, others suffocating after plunging into water bodies through unstable frozen surfaces. On one level, the installation is a monument to them. "By overlapping of elements, in a way I'm introducing the goavvi to London," says Sara.

Opposing Perspectives

This artwork also underscores the clear contrast between the western interpretation of energy as a resource to be utilized for profit and livelihood and the Sámi worldview of life force as an inherent essence in animals, individuals, and the environment. Tate Modern's history as a industrial facility is tied up in this, as is what the Sámi consider eco-imperialism by Scandinavian states. While attempting to be standard bearers for clean sources, Scandinavian countries have disagreed with the Sámi over the building of turbine fields, hydroelectric dams, and digging operations on their native soil; the Sámi contend their legal protections, livelihoods, and traditions are endangered. "It's hard being such a limited population to defend yourself when the arguments are rooted in global sustainability," Sara observes. "Mining practices has appropriated the discourse of ecology, but yet it's just aiming to find more suitable ways to maintain practices of consumption."

Personal Struggles

Sara and her kin have personally clashed with the national administration over its tightening policies on reindeer management. A few years ago, Sara's brother embarked on a sequence of finally failed lawsuits over the mandatory slaughter of his animals, supposedly to stop excessive feeding. In support, Sara created a extended set of creations titled Pile O'Sápmi featuring a massive drape of numerous reindeer skulls, which was exhibited at the the art exhibition Documenta 14 and later obtained by the public gallery, where it resides in the lobby.

The Role of Art in Activism

For numerous Indigenous people, visual expression appears the only sphere in which they can be listened to by people of other nations. Two years ago, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|