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Guests to the renowned gallery are used to surprising experiences in its spacious Turbine Hall. They have basked under an artificial sun, slid down amusement rides, and witnessed automated jellyfish drifting through the air. However this marks the inaugural time they will be engaging themselves in the complex nose cavities of a reindeer. The latest artist commission for this cavernous space—created by Native Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—invites patrons into a maze-like structure based on the scaled-up inside of a reindeer's nose cavities. Once inside, they can wander around or chill out on pelts, listening on headphones to tribal seniors imparting tales and wisdom.

The Significance of the Nose

Why choose the nasal structure? It may sound whimsical, but the artwork honors a little-known scientific wonder: scientists have discovered that in less than one second, the reindeer's nose can warm the incoming air it inhales by eighty degrees, helping the creature to endure in extreme Arctic temperatures. Scaling the nose to larger than human size, Sara explains, "produces a feeling of insignificance that you as a person are not superior over nature." The artist is a ex- reporter, children's author, and rights advocate, who is from a herding family in the far north of Norway. "Perhaps that creates the possibility to change your viewpoint or spark some humility," she adds.

A Tribute to Sámi Culture

The winding design is part of a elements in Sara's engaging art project showcasing the culture, knowledge, and beliefs of the Sámi, the continent's original inhabitants. Semi-nomadic, the Sámi total roughly 100,000 people distributed across the Norwegian north, Finland, the Swedish Lapland, and the Russian Arctic (an territory they call Sápmi). They have faced oppression, cultural suppression, and eradication of their tongue by all four nations. With an emphasis on the reindeer, an creature at the heart of the Sámi belief system and creation story, the installation also draws attention to the group's challenges relating to the climate crisis, loss of territory, and colonialism.

Meaning in Materials

On the lengthy access ramp, there's a looming, 26-meter formation of reindeer hides entangled by utility lines. It serves as a symbol for the political and economic systems restricting the Sámi. Partly a utility pole, part heavenly staircase, this section of the exhibit, titled Goavve-, refers to the Sámi term for an severe climatic event, in which dense coatings of ice appear as changing temperatures liquefy and refreeze the snow, trapping the reindeers' primary cold-season food, moss. The condition is a result of planetary warming, which is taking place up to much more rapidly in the Far North than elsewhere.

Three years ago, I visited Sara in a remote town during a icy season and joined Sámi pastoralists on their Arctic vehicles in chilly conditions as they hauled containers of food pellets on to the exposed Arctic plains to dispense through labor. These animals crowded round us, pawing the icy ground in futility for vegetative morsels. This expensive and labour-intensive process is having a significant influence on herding practices—and on the animals' natural survival. However the alternative is starvation. As goavvi winters become commonplace, reindeer are dying—a number from starvation, others drowning after sinking in streams through thinning ice sheets. To some extent, the art is a tribute to them. "With the layering of elements, in a way I'm bringing the condition to London," says Sara.

Contrasting Belief Systems

This artwork also underscores the sharp difference between the modern view of energy as a asset to be utilized for profit and survival and the Sámi worldview of vitality as an innate life force in creatures, humans, and land. Tate Modern's legacy as a industrial facility is connected to this, as is what the Sámi consider environmental exploitation by Nordic countries. As they strive to be leaders for sustainable power, these states have locked horns with the Sámi over the building of windfarms, water power facilities, and mines on their ancestral land; the Sámi contend their human rights, incomes, and traditions are at risk. "It's hard being such a small minority to protect your rights when the arguments are grounded in saving the world," Sara observes. "Extractivism has appropriated the language of environmentalism, but yet it's just aiming to find better ways to continue practices of expenditure."

Family Conflicts

She and her relatives have personally clashed with the Norwegian government over its tightening rules on herding. Previously, Sara's brother initiated a sequence of ultimately unsuccessful legal cases over the required reduction of his herd, apparently to stop overgrazing. As a show of solidarity, Sara produced a extended set of pieces called Pile O'Sápmi comprising a massive screen of four hundred animal bones, which was displayed at the the event Documenta 14 and later purchased by the national institution, where it hangs in the lobby.

The Role of Art in Activism

Among the community, creative work appears the only realm in which they can be heard by outsiders. Recently, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|