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Attendees to the renowned gallery are used to surprising encounters in its vast Turbine Hall. They've sunbathed under an artificial sun, descended down helter skelters, and witnessed robotic jellyfish hovering through the air. However this marks the inaugural time they will be engaging themselves in the intricate nose cavities of a reindeer. The newest artist commission for this cavernous space—designed by Indigenous Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—invites visitors into a maze-like design modeled after the scaled-up interior of a reindeer's nose cavities. Upon entering, they can stroll around or relax on skins, tuning in on headphones to tribal seniors imparting stories and insights.

The Significance of the Nose

What's the focus on the nose? It might appear quirky, but the exhibit pays tribute to a rarely recognized natural marvel: experts have uncovered that in less than one second, the reindeer's nose can warm the incoming air it inhales by 80 degrees celsius, enabling the creature to thrive in harsh Arctic climates. Scaling the nose to human-scale dimensions, Sara says, "generates a perception of smallness that you as a person are not dominant over nature." The artist is a ex- journalist, children's author, and environmental activist, who is from a reindeer-herding family in the Norwegian Arctic. "Maybe that generates the potential to change your perspective or trigger some humbleness," she states.

A Tribute to Indigenous Heritage

The labyrinthine structure is one of several elements in Sara's absorbing exhibition honoring the traditions, understanding, and philosophy of the Sámi, the sole native group in Europe. Semi-nomadic, the Sámi count about 100,000 people ranged across the Norwegian north, the Finnish Arctic, Sweden, and Russia's Kola Peninsula (an region they call Sápmi). They've experienced oppression, integration policies, and suppression of their tongue by all four states. Through highlighting the reindeer, an animal at the heart of the Sámi cosmology and origin tale, the art also highlights the people's struggles relating to the climate crisis, loss of territory, and imperialism.

Metaphor in Materials

At the lengthy entrance slope, there's a soaring, 26-meter sculpture of reindeer hides trapped by utility lines. It represents a analogy for the societal frameworks constraining the Sámi. Like an electrical tower, part heavenly staircase, this part of the exhibit, titled Goavve-, relates to the Sámi term for an harsh environmental condition, in which solid coatings of ice form as changing temperatures liquefy and refreeze the snow, trapping the reindeers' main cold-season nourishment, fungus. This phenomenon is a consequence of planetary warming, which is happening up to much more rapidly in the Arctic than in other regions.

A few years back, I traveled to see Sara in the Norwegian far north during a icy season and went with Sámi herders on their snowmobiles in biting cold as they carried containers of food pellets on to the exposed Arctic plains to dispense through labor. The reindeer gathered round us, scratching the frozen ground in vain for lichen-covered bits. This costly and labour-intensive process is having a severe impact on animal rearing—and on the animals' self-sufficiency. However the other option is death. As goavvi winters become routine, reindeer are succumbing—a number from hunger, others submerging after sinking in water bodies through unstable frozen surfaces. On one level, the art is a memorial to them. "By overlapping of elements, in a way I'm bringing the goavvi to London," says Sara.

Opposing Worldviews

The sculpture also highlights the clear difference between the western understanding of power as a asset to be harnessed for profit and survival and the Sámi worldview of vitality as an inherent life force in animals, humans, and nature. Tate Modern's past as a fossil fuel plant is linked with this, as is what the Sámi consider environmental exploitation by regional governments. In their efforts to be standard bearers for clean sources, these states have disagreed with the Sámi over the construction of turbine fields, water power facilities, and extraction sites on their traditional territory; the Sámi assert their human rights, ways of life, and way of life are threatened. "It's challenging being such a tiny group to stand your ground when the arguments are grounded in environmental protection," Sara comments. "Mining practices has appropriated the rhetoric of ecology, but still it's just striving to find more suitable ways to persist in habits of consumption."

Family Conflicts

The artist and her family have personally conflicted with the Norwegian government over its ever-stricter rules on herding. Previously, Sara's sibling embarked on a sequence of ultimately unsuccessful legal cases over the forced culling of his herd, ostensibly to stop overgrazing. In support, Sara created a extended series of artworks named Pile O'Sápmi featuring a colossal drape of four hundred animal bones, which was exhibited at the the show Documenta 14 and later acquired by the national institution, where it is displayed in the lobby.

Art as Awareness

For many Sámi, creative work is the sole realm in which they can be understood by people of other nations. Recently, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|