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Visitors to the renowned gallery are familiar to unexpected experiences in its vast Turbine Hall. They've relaxed under an artificial sun, descended down helter skelters, and witnessed robotic jellyfish floating through the air. However this marks the inaugural time they will be immersing themselves in the complex nose cavities of a reindeer. The latest creative installation for this cavernous space—created by Indigenous Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—invites gallerygoers into a labyrinthine design modeled after the scaled-up inside of a reindeer's nasal airways. Inside, they can wander around or chill out on reindeer hides, tuning in on headphones to tribal seniors sharing tales and insights.

Why the Nose?

What's the focus on the nose? It could appear quirky, but the exhibit celebrates a little-known biological feat: researchers have found that in under a second, the reindeer's nose can warm the surrounding air it breathes in by eighty degrees, helping the creature to endure in inhospitable Arctic temperatures. Scaling the nose to bigger than a person, Sara explains, "creates a sense of smallness that you as a person are not superior over nature." She is a ex- writer, young adult author, and land defender, who is from a herding family in northern Norway. "Maybe that fosters the chance to alter your perspective or spark some humbleness," she states.

A Celebration to Indigenous Heritage

The maze-like structure is part of a components in Sara's engaging exhibition showcasing the traditions, understanding, and beliefs of the Sámi, the sole native group in Europe. Partially migratory, the Sámi number approximately 100,000 people distributed across northern Norway, Finland, Sweden, and the Russian Arctic (an area they call Sápmi). They have faced persecution, cultural suppression, and repression of their tongue by all four countries. By focusing on the reindeer, an creature at the core of the Sámi cosmology and origin tale, the work also highlights the group's challenges relating to the climate crisis, loss of territory, and external control.

Symbolism in Elements

Along the extended entry ramp, there's a soaring, 26-metre sculpture of reindeer hides entangled by utility lines. It serves as a analogy for the governance and financial structures restricting the Sámi. Partly a utility pole, part heavenly staircase, this section of the artwork, named Goavve-, relates to the Sámi term for an harsh environmental condition, whereby thick layers of ice develop as varying temperatures liquefy and refreeze the snow, trapping the reindeers' key winter food, fungus. Goavvi is a result of planetary warming, which is happening up to at an accelerated rate in the Polar region than globally.

A few years back, I visited Sara in the Norwegian far north during a icy season and joined Sámi reindeer keepers on their snowmobiles in biting cold as they transported containers of animal nutrition on to the exposed tundra to dispense by hand. The reindeer gathered round us, pawing the frozen ground in futility for vegetative morsels. This resource-intensive and demanding procedure is having a severe impact on animal rearing—and on the animals' independence. But the alternative is starvation. As goavvi winters become commonplace, reindeer are dying—some from starvation, others submerging after plunging into lakes and rivers through thinning ice sheets. To some extent, the art is a memorial to them. "Through the stacking of elements, in a way I'm transporting the phenomenon to London," says Sara.

Opposing Belief Systems

The installation also emphasizes the clear contrast between the industrial understanding of energy as a resource to be exploited for economic benefit and existence and the Sámi worldview of vitality as an natural life force in animals, humans, and land. Tate Modern's past as a fossil fuel plant is linked with this, as is what the Sámi see as environmental exploitation by Scandinavian states. As they strive to be leaders for renewable energy, Scandinavian countries have disagreed with the Sámi over the development of turbine fields, hydroelectric dams, and digging operations on their traditional territory; the Sámi argue their legal protections, ways of life, and way of life are threatened. "It's challenging being such a limited population to defend yourself when the arguments are based on global sustainability," Sara comments. "Resource exploitation has adopted the language of ecology, but yet it's just striving to find alternative ways to continue practices of expenditure."

Individual Conflicts

The artist and her family have themselves clashed with the Norwegian government over its ever-stricter regulations on animal husbandry. In 2016, Sara's brother embarked on a series of ultimately unsuccessful legal cases over the mandatory slaughter of his herd, apparently to stop overgrazing. In support, Sara developed a extended series of artworks titled Pile O'Sápmi comprising a massive drape of numerous cranial remains, which was displayed at the 2017's show Documenta 14 and later acquired by the public gallery, where it is displayed in the lobby.

Creative Expression as Awareness

For many Sámi, art appears the sole realm in which they can be understood by the global community. Recently, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|