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Visitors to the renowned gallery are accustomed to surprising encounters in its expansive Turbine Hall. They have sunbathed under an man-made sun, slid down amusement rides, and witnessed robotic sea creatures hovering through the air. But this marks the inaugural time they will be venturing themselves in the complex nasal cavities of a reindeer. The current artistic project for this huge space—developed by Native Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—invites gallerygoers into a winding construction based on the enlarged inside of a reindeer's nasal airways. Once inside, they can wander around or unwind on skins, tuning in on earphones to community leaders telling narratives and knowledge.

Focus on the Nasal Passages

Why the nose? It might seem playful, but the installation pays tribute to a rarely recognized biological feat: experts have found that in a fraction of a second, the reindeer's nose can heat the incoming air it takes in by 80 degrees celsius, enabling the animal to thrive in harsh Arctic temperatures. Enlarging the nose to human-scale dimensions, Sara explains, "produces a feeling of inferiority that you as a individual are not dominant over nature." The artist is a former journalist, writer for kids, and rights advocate, who is from a pastoral family in the far north of Norway. "Possibly that creates the chance to alter your viewpoint or evoke some humbleness," she continues.

A Celebration to Traditional Ways

The labyrinthine structure is part of a components in Sara's immersive exhibition celebrating the heritage, science, and worldview of the Sámi, Europe's only Indigenous people. Traditionally mobile, the Sámi total about 100,000 people ranged across the Norwegian north, Finland, Sweden, and the Russian Arctic (an region they call Sápmi). They've experienced discrimination, cultural suppression, and eradication of their dialect by all four countries. With an emphasis on the reindeer, an creature at the core of the Sámi mythology and founding narrative, the installation also highlights the community's struggles associated with the environmental emergency, land dispossession, and imperialism.

Symbolism in Elements

Along the extended entry ramp, there's a soaring, 26-meter sculpture of reindeer hides trapped by electrical wires. It serves as a analogy for the political and economic systems restricting the Sámi. Partly a utility pole, part heavenly staircase, this part of the artwork, titled Goavve-, points to the Sámi term for an extreme weather phenomenon, whereby dense layers of ice form as fluctuating weather thaw and ice over the snow, locking in the reindeers' main cold-season nourishment, fungus. The condition is a outcome of global heating, which is occurring up to at an accelerated rate in the Arctic than globally.

A few years back, I visited Sara in the Norwegian far north during a goavvi winter and accompanied Sámi herders on their motorized sleds in freezing temperatures as they carried carts of supplementary feed on to the wind-scoured Arctic plains to provide by hand. These animals gathered round us, pawing the icy ground in vain for mossy bits. This expensive and laborious procedure is having a severe effect on reindeer husbandry—and on the animals' independence. However the choice is malnutrition. As goavvi winters become commonplace, reindeer are perishing—a number from lack of food, others suffocating after falling into lakes and rivers through unstable frozen surfaces. On one level, the art is a memorial to them. "By overlapping of components, in a way I'm bringing the phenomenon to London," says Sara.

Diverging Worldviews

The installation also emphasizes the sharp difference between the western understanding of energy as a commodity to be harnessed for profit and existence and the Sámi outlook of life force as an inherent life force in animals, humans, and land. Tate Modern's legacy as a industrial facility is connected to this, as is what the Sámi consider green colonialism by Scandinavian states. In their efforts to be standard bearers for clean sources, these states have clashed with the Sámi over the development of turbine fields, water power facilities, and mines on their native soil; the Sámi assert their fundamental freedoms, ways of life, and way of life are at risk. "It's challenging being such a tiny group to defend yourself when the arguments are based on environmental protection," Sara comments. "Extractivism has appropriated the language of environmentalism, but yet it's just striving to find alternative ways to persist in practices of consumption."

Family Conflicts

Sara and her kin have personally clashed with the national administration over its tightening rules on herding. In 2016, Sara's sibling initiated a set of ultimately unsuccessful legal cases over the forced culling of his livestock, apparently to stop vegetation depletion. As a show of solidarity, Sara produced a extended collection of artworks titled Pile O'Sápmi comprising a massive curtain of four hundred animal bones, which was exhibited at the the art exhibition Documenta 14 and later purchased by the National Museum of Oslo, where it hangs in the entrance.

Art as Awareness

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