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Attendees to the renowned gallery are familiar to surprising experiences in its vast Turbine Hall. They've relaxed under an man-made sun, glided down spiral slides, and observed automated jellyfish drifting through the air. However this marks the first time they will be immersing themselves in the detailed nose chambers of a reindeer. The latest artist commission for this immense space—developed by Indigenous Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—encourages gallerygoers into a labyrinthine construction inspired by the enlarged inside of a reindeer's nose airways. Inside, they can meander around or unwind on pelts, tuning in on earphones to Sámi elders telling stories and knowledge.

The Significance of the Nose

Why choose the nasal structure? It might seem whimsical, but the artwork honors a obscure biological feat: experts have uncovered that in under a second, the reindeer's nose can raise the temperature of the incoming air it inhales by 80 degrees celsius, enabling the creature to survive in harsh Arctic temperatures. Scaling the nose to larger than human size, Sara explains, "generates a perception of smallness that you as a individual are not in control over nature." She is a former reporter, writer for kids, and rights advocate, who is from a herding family in the far north of Norway. "Perhaps that fosters the potential to change your perspective or evoke some humbleness," she states.

An Homage to Indigenous Heritage

The maze-like installation is one of several elements in Sara's engaging commission celebrating the heritage, knowledge, and beliefs of the Sámi, Europe's only Indigenous people. Traditionally mobile, the Sámi total roughly 100,000 people distributed across northern Norway, Finland, Sweden, and Russia's Kola Peninsula (an region they call Sápmi). They've faced oppression, integration policies, and eradication of their tongue by all four countries. With an emphasis on the reindeer, an animal at the heart of the Sámi cosmology and founding narrative, the installation also spotlights the group's struggles relating to the environmental emergency, land dispossession, and external control.

Meaning in Materials

At the long entry slope, there's a towering, eighty-five-foot formation of reindeer hides ensnared by utility lines. It serves as a metaphor for the governance and financial structures constraining the Sámi. Partly a utility pole, part celestial ladder, this section of the artwork, titled Goavve-, relates to the Sámi name for an extreme weather phenomenon, whereby thick layers of ice appear as varying conditions melt and ice over the snow, encasing the reindeers' main winter sustenance, moss. Goavvi is a result of global heating, which is happening up to four times faster in the Arctic than elsewhere.

Previously, I visited Sara in Guovdageaidnu during a severe cold period and went with Sámi herders on their snowmobiles in biting cold as they hauled carts of animal nutrition on to the exposed frozen landscape to provide manually. These animals gathered round us, pawing the icy ground in futility for vegetative bits. This costly and laborious method is having a significant impact on herding practices—and on the animals' self-sufficiency. However the other option is death. As these icy periods become routine, reindeer are perishing—a number from lack of food, others drowning after sinking in streams through prematurely melting ice. To some extent, the art is a tribute to them. "With the layering of components, in a way I'm transporting the condition to London," says Sara.

Opposing Perspectives

The installation also emphasizes the clear difference between the industrial understanding of energy as a commodity to be utilized for economic benefit and livelihood and the Sámi outlook of energy as an innate life force in creatures, humans, and land. Tate Modern's legacy as a industrial facility is linked with this, as is what the Sámi view as environmental exploitation by Nordic countries. In their efforts to be exemplars for renewable energy, Scandinavian countries have clashed with the Sámi over the construction of wind energy projects, water power facilities, and extraction sites on their traditional territory; the Sámi argue their fundamental freedoms, incomes, and traditions are endangered. "It's hard being such a small minority to stand your ground when the justifications are based on saving the world," Sara notes. "Extractivism has appropriated the language of environmentalism, but nonetheless it's just striving to find more suitable ways to maintain habits of use."

Individual Conflicts

Sara and her relatives have personally disagreed with the Norwegian government over its tightening policies on herding. A few years ago, Sara's brother initiated a sequence of finally failed legal cases over the forced culling of his herd, supposedly to stop overgrazing. In support, Sara developed a four-year series of creations called Pile O'Sápmi comprising a huge screen of 400 cranial remains, which was shown at the the show Documenta 14 and later purchased by the National Museum of Oslo, where it hangs in the lobby.

Creative Expression as Advocacy

For numerous Indigenous people, art appears the exclusive realm in which they can be heard by the global community. Two years ago, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|