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Attendees to the renowned gallery are accustomed to surprising encounters in its expansive Turbine Hall. They have sunbathed under an simulated sun, glided down helter skelters, and witnessed automated sea creatures hovering through the air. Yet this marks the initial time they will be immersing themselves in the intricate nose passages of a reindeer. The latest artistic project for this huge space—created by Native Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—encourages visitors into a labyrinthine construction based on the enlarged interior of a reindeer's nose airways. Once inside, they can wander around or relax on reindeer hides, listening on headphones to Sámi elders sharing stories and wisdom.

Why the Nose?

What's the focus on the nose? It may appear whimsical, but the artwork celebrates a little-known scientific wonder: scientists have found that in a fraction of a second, the reindeer's nose can raise the temperature of the ambient air it inhales by 80 degrees celsius, helping the creature to endure in extreme Arctic conditions. Scaling the nose to larger than human size, Sara says, "generates a sense of inferiority that you as a person are not dominant over nature." She is a ex- writer, young adult author, and land defender, who is from a pastoral family in the far north of Norway. "Perhaps that generates the chance to shift your outlook or evoke some modesty," she adds.

A Celebration to Sámi Culture

The maze-like installation is one of several components in Sara's absorbing exhibition celebrating the traditions, science, and philosophy of the Sámi, the continent's original inhabitants. Traditionally mobile, the Sámi total roughly 100,000 people spread across the Norwegian north, Finland, Sweden, and the Russian Arctic (an area they call Sápmi). They have endured discrimination, integration policies, and eradication of their dialect by all four countries. By focusing on the reindeer, an animal at the heart of the Sámi mythology and founding narrative, the work also highlights the community's issues associated with the climate crisis, property rights, and colonialism.

Symbolism in Materials

At the long access slope, there's a soaring, eighty-five-foot structure of pelts ensnared by power and light cables. It can be read as a analogy for the societal frameworks limiting the Sámi. Partly a utility pole, part heavenly staircase, this section of the installation, titled Goavve-, points to the Sámi term for an harsh environmental condition, in which solid sheets of ice appear as varying temperatures thaw and solidify again the snow, locking in the reindeers' main winter nourishment, moss. The condition is a consequence of global heating, which is taking place up to at an accelerated rate in the Far North than globally.

Previously, I visited Sara in a remote town during a icy season and went with Sámi pastoralists on their motorized sleds in freezing temperatures as they hauled carts of supplementary feed on to the barren tundra to provide by hand. These animals gathered round us, digging the icy ground in futility for vegetative pieces. This expensive and labour-intensive method is having a significant influence on reindeer husbandry—and on the animals' self-sufficiency. Yet the alternative is death. As these icy periods become commonplace, reindeer are dying—a number from lack of food, others drowning after sinking in lakes and rivers through prematurely melting ice. On one level, the work is a monument to them. "By overlapping of materials, in a way I'm introducing the phenomenon to London," says Sara.

Opposing Belief Systems

This artwork also highlights the stark difference between the western understanding of electricity as a commodity to be exploited for economic benefit and existence and the Sámi outlook of energy as an natural life force in creatures, people, and the environment. Tate Modern's legacy as a industrial facility is tied up in this, as is what the Sámi consider environmental exploitation by Scandinavian states. While attempting to be leaders for clean sources, Nordic nations have clashed with the Sámi over the building of turbine fields, water power facilities, and mines on their traditional territory; the Sámi assert their fundamental freedoms, ways of life, and culture are endangered. "It's very difficult being such a small minority to protect your rights when the justifications are based on global sustainability," Sara observes. "Resource exploitation has appropriated the rhetoric of ecology, but yet it's just striving to find better ways to persist in habits of expenditure."

Individual Struggles

She and her relatives have personally conflicted with the Norwegian government over its increasingly stringent policies on herding. A few years ago, Sara's sibling embarked on a series of unsuccessful lawsuits over the mandatory slaughter of his animals, apparently to stop excessive feeding. To back him, Sara created a four-year series of creations called Pile O'Sápmi featuring a massive drape of four hundred animal bones, which was displayed at the 2017's show Documenta 14 and later acquired by the national institution, where it resides in the lobby.

Creative Expression as Awareness

Among the community, art seems the sole sphere in which they can be understood by people of other nations. Recently, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|