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Visitors to the renowned gallery are used to surprising experiences in its spacious Turbine Hall. They've basked under an simulated sun, descended down spiral slides, and observed automated jellyfish drifting through the air. But this marks the inaugural time they will be immersing themselves in the detailed nasal cavities of a reindeer. The current artistic project for this cavernous space—developed by Native Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—encourages patrons into a winding design based on the enlarged interior of a reindeer's nose airways. Inside, they can meander around or unwind on pelts, listening on earphones to community leaders sharing narratives and insights.

Focus on the Nasal Passages

What's the focus on the nose? It could appear quirky, but the artwork honors a obscure biological feat: researchers have uncovered that in less than one second, the reindeer's nose can warm the ambient air it takes in by eighty degrees, allowing the creature to thrive in harsh Arctic climates. Scaling the nose to human-scale dimensions, Sara says, "produces a sense of smallness that you as a person are not in control over nature." She is a ex- writer, writer for kids, and land defender, who hails from a reindeer-herding family in the far north of Norway. "Possibly that creates the possibility to change your perspective or spark some modesty," she continues.

A Celebration to Traditional Ways

The labyrinthine design is part of a components in Sara's immersive art project showcasing the culture, knowledge, and beliefs of the Sámi, the continent's original inhabitants. Traditionally mobile, the Sámi number roughly 100,000 people spread across northern Norway, Finland, Sweden, and the Russian Arctic (an region they call Sápmi). They have faced persecution, cultural suppression, and suppression of their dialect by all four states. By focusing on the reindeer, an animal at the core of the Sámi belief system and founding narrative, the installation also spotlights the people's challenges relating to the environmental emergency, loss of territory, and imperialism.

Meaning in Materials

Along the lengthy access ramp, there's a soaring, 26-metre sculpture of pelts trapped by electrical wires. It represents a analogy for the governance and financial structures constraining the Sámi. Like an electrical tower, part spiritual ascent, this part of the installation, called Goavve-, points to the Sámi term for an harsh environmental condition, in which solid layers of ice appear as changing conditions melt and solidify again the snow, encasing the reindeers' primary cold-season nourishment, fungus. The condition is a result of climate change, which is happening up to much more rapidly in the Polar region than elsewhere.

Previously, I visited Sara in a remote town during a goavvi winter and went with Sámi herders on their motorized sleds in biting cold as they carried carts of animal nutrition on to the wind-scoured frozen landscape to dispense through labor. The herd surrounded round us, digging the slippery ground in vain for vegetative bits. This costly and demanding procedure is having a significant impact on animal rearing—and on the animals' self-sufficiency. However the alternative is death. When such conditions become frequent, reindeer are dying—a number from hunger, others submerging after falling into water bodies through unstable frozen surfaces. In a sense, the installation is a tribute to them. "Through the stacking of components, in a way I'm introducing the condition to London," says Sara.

Diverging Worldviews

The sculpture also highlights the stark divergence between the western understanding of electricity as a asset to be utilized for economic benefit and survival and the Sámi worldview of vitality as an inherent life force in animals, individuals, and nature. Tate Modern's past as a fossil fuel plant is tied up in this, as is what the Sámi see as environmental exploitation by Nordic countries. As they strive to be exemplars for sustainable power, these states have clashed with the Sámi over the development of wind energy projects, river barriers, and extraction sites on their ancestral land; the Sámi assert their legal protections, livelihoods, and traditions are endangered. "It's very difficult being such a tiny group to stand your ground when the arguments are rooted in saving the world," Sara notes. "Extractivism has appropriated the language of ecology, but still it's just striving to find more suitable ways to persist in patterns of expenditure."

Family Challenges

The artist and her relatives have personally conflicted with the state authorities over its tightening rules on reindeer management. Previously, Sara's sibling initiated a series of ultimately unsuccessful court actions over the forced culling of his animals, apparently to stop overgrazing. In support, Sara created a four-year set of creations called Pile O'Sápmi including a colossal drape of four hundred animal bones, which was displayed at the 2017's show Documenta 14 and later purchased by the public gallery, where it resides in the lobby.

The Role of Art in Activism

Among the community, art is the only realm in which they can be listened to by people of other nations. Recently, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|