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Attendees to the renowned gallery are familiar to surprising encounters in its vast Turbine Hall. They have basked under an artificial sun, descended down spiral slides, and seen automated jellyfish floating through the air. However this marks the initial time they will be immersing themselves in the intricate nasal cavities of a reindeer. The latest creative installation for this cavernous space—designed by Indigenous Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—encourages visitors into a labyrinthine structure inspired by the enlarged interior of a reindeer's nasal passages. Once inside, they can stroll around or relax on pelts, listening on headphones to tribal seniors sharing tales and insights.

Why the Nose?

What's the focus on the nose? It could appear quirky, but the exhibit celebrates a obscure natural marvel: experts have uncovered that in under a second, the reindeer's nose can raise the temperature of the ambient air it inhales by eighty degrees, enabling the creature to thrive in inhospitable Arctic climates. Enlarging the nose to human-scale dimensions, Sara says, "generates a perception of smallness that you as a person are not in control over nature." Sara is a former reporter, writer for kids, and environmental activist, who hails from a reindeer-herding family in northern Norway. "Maybe that creates the chance to change your outlook or evoke some humility," she adds.

An Homage to Indigenous Heritage

The winding installation is among various features in Sara's absorbing art project showcasing the traditions, understanding, and philosophy of the Sámi, Europe's only Indigenous people. Traditionally mobile, the Sámi total approximately 100,000 people spread across the Norwegian north, Finland, Sweden, and the Kola region (an area they call Sápmi). They've experienced persecution, forced assimilation, and eradication of their tongue by all four nations. With an emphasis on the reindeer, an creature at the center of the Sámi cosmology and founding narrative, the art also highlights the people's struggles associated with the climate crisis, loss of territory, and imperialism.

Symbolism in Materials

Along the extended access incline, there's a looming, 26-meter sculpture of pelts entangled by electrical wires. It can be read as a analogy for the governance and financial structures constraining the Sámi. Partly a utility pole, part celestial ladder, this part of the installation, named Goavve-, points to the Sámi term for an severe climatic event, in which thick layers of ice develop as varying conditions melt and ice over the snow, locking in the reindeers' key cold-season sustenance, moss. This phenomenon is a result of climate change, which is taking place up to four times faster in the Far North than in other regions.

Previously, I traveled to see Sara in Guovdageaidnu during a goavvi winter and joined Sámi reindeer keepers on their snowmobiles in chilly conditions as they carried trailers of animal nutrition on to the wind-scoured Arctic plains to provide by hand. The herd gathered round us, pawing the slippery ground in futility for mossy morsels. This expensive and labour-intensive method is having a drastic impact on herding practices—and on the animals' independence. But the alternative is malnutrition. As goavvi winters become routine, reindeer are dying—some from hunger, others drowning after falling into streams through prematurely melting ice. In a sense, the art is a tribute to them. "With the layering of elements, in a way I'm transporting the phenomenon to London," says Sara.

Opposing Belief Systems

The installation also underscores the clear contrast between the modern view of energy as a commodity to be harnessed for economic benefit and survival and the Sámi outlook of life force 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 view as environmental exploitation by Nordic countries. In their efforts to be leaders for sustainable power, these states have clashed with the Sámi over the building of turbine fields, hydroelectric dams, and extraction sites on their ancestral land; the Sámi assert their human rights, ways of life, and culture are at risk. "It's challenging being such a limited population to defend yourself when the justifications are based on global sustainability," Sara observes. "Mining practices has co-opted the rhetoric of ecology, but yet it's just attempting to find more suitable ways to persist in patterns of expenditure."

Family Conflicts

The artist and her kin have personally clashed with the state authorities over its increasingly stringent regulations on herding. Previously, Sara's brother embarked on a set of unsuccessful legal cases over the required reduction of his herd, ostensibly to stop overgrazing. In support, Sara created a extended collection of artworks named Pile O'Sápmi comprising a colossal drape of four hundred animal bones, which was shown at the the show Documenta 14 and later obtained by the national institution, where it is displayed in the entrance.

Creative Expression as Awareness

For numerous Indigenous people, creative work seems the sole sphere in which they can be heard by people of other nations. Two years ago, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|