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Attendees to the renowned gallery are familiar to unexpected displays in its expansive Turbine Hall. They've relaxed under an simulated sun, glided down amusement rides, and observed robotic jellyfish floating through the air. But this marks the inaugural time they will be immersing themselves in the detailed nasal cavities of a reindeer. The current artist commission for this immense space—created by Native Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—encourages gallerygoers into a maze-like structure inspired by the expanded interior of a reindeer's nasal airways. Once inside, they can wander around or relax on reindeer hides, listening on earphones to community leaders imparting tales and knowledge.

The Significance of the Nose

Why the nose? It might appear whimsical, but the artwork celebrates a obscure scientific wonder: scientists have uncovered that in a fraction of a second, the reindeer's nose can heat the ambient air it breathes in by 80 degrees celsius, allowing the creature to thrive in inhospitable Arctic temperatures. Scaling the nose to human-scale dimensions, Sara explains, "produces a sense of insignificance that you as a person are not superior over nature." Sara is a ex- reporter, children's author, and environmental activist, who comes from a herding family in the Norwegian Arctic. "Possibly that creates the potential to change your viewpoint or evoke some humility," she states.

A Tribute to Traditional Ways

The maze-like installation is part of a elements in Sara's absorbing art project celebrating the traditions, understanding, and worldview of the Sámi, Europe's only Indigenous people. Semi-nomadic, the Sámi count roughly 100,000 people ranged across northern Norway, Finland, the Swedish Lapland, and Russia's Kola Peninsula (an region they call Sápmi). They have experienced oppression, forced assimilation, and repression of their tongue by all four countries. With an emphasis on the reindeer, an animal at the heart of the Sámi cosmology and creation story, the work also draws attention to the group's issues associated with the global warming, loss of territory, and imperialism.

Symbolism in Components

At the extended entry slope, there's a looming, 26-meter structure of reindeer hides ensnared by electrical wires. It serves as a analogy for the political and economic systems restricting the Sámi. Part pylon, part spiritual ascent, this part of the installation, titled Goavve-, relates to the Sámi word for an extreme weather phenomenon, in which thick layers of ice develop as fluctuating weather melt and ice over the snow, trapping the reindeers' main winter sustenance, fungus. Goavvi is a result of planetary warming, which is taking place up to four times faster in the Polar region than globally.

Three years ago, I met with Sara in Guovdageaidnu during a goavvi winter and joined Sámi reindeer keepers on their snowmobiles in freezing temperatures as they transported carts of food pellets on to the barren Arctic plains to dispense manually. The herd surrounded round us, digging the icy ground in futility for lichen-covered pieces. This costly and labour-intensive method is having a drastic impact on animal rearing—and on the animals' independence. But the other option is death. When such conditions become commonplace, reindeer are succumbing—some from starvation, others drowning after sinking in water bodies through thinning ice sheets. To some extent, the installation is a memorial to them. "Through the stacking of components, in a way I'm introducing the condition to London," says Sara.

Opposing Perspectives

The sculpture also underscores the stark contrast between the industrial interpretation of electricity as a asset to be exploited for economic benefit and livelihood and the Sámi outlook of vitality as an innate power in animals, individuals, and land. Tate Modern's past as a coal and oil power station is linked with this, as is what the Sámi see as eco-imperialism by regional governments. While attempting to be exemplars for clean sources, Nordic nations have disagreed with the Sámi over the construction of windfarms, water power facilities, and mines on their traditional territory; the Sámi assert their legal protections, ways of life, and way of life are threatened. "It's hard being such a tiny group to stand your ground when the reasons are rooted in saving the world," Sara notes. "Mining practices has adopted the language of ecology, but yet it's just striving to find better ways to maintain habits of use."

Family Struggles

Sara and her relatives have themselves disagreed with the Norwegian government over its increasingly stringent policies on herding. In 2016, Sara's sibling initiated a series of unsuccessful court actions over the mandatory slaughter of his animals, supposedly to stop overgrazing. In support, Sara developed a multi-year series of artworks called Pile O'Sápmi including a massive drape of 400 cranial remains, which was shown at the the art exhibition Documenta 14 and later acquired by the national institution, where it resides in the lobby.

Art as Advocacy

For numerous Indigenous people, creative work appears the sole realm in which they can be heard by outsiders. Recently, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|