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Attendees to the renowned gallery are used to surprising displays in its spacious Turbine Hall. They've basked under an man-made sun, descended down spiral slides, and observed AI-powered jellyfish hovering through the air. However this marks the first time they will be venturing themselves in the complex nasal cavities of a reindeer. The newest artist commission for this cavernous space—designed by Native Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—welcomes visitors into a maze-like design modeled after the expanded interior of a reindeer's nasal airways. Once inside, they can meander around or unwind on skins, listening on headphones to tribal seniors sharing tales and insights.

The Significance of the Nose

Why the nose? It may sound whimsical, but the artwork celebrates a little-known biological feat: scientists have uncovered that in a fraction of a second, the reindeer's nose can heat the ambient air it inhales by 80°C, helping the creature to survive in inhospitable Arctic temperatures. Expanding the nose to human-scale dimensions, Sara says, "generates a sense of smallness that you as a human being are not in control over nature." Sara is a ex- writer, young adult author, and rights advocate, who hails from a reindeer-herding family in the far north of Norway. "Perhaps that fosters the possibility to shift your viewpoint or trigger some humility," she states.

An Homage to Traditional Ways

The winding structure is among various components in Sara's engaging art project honoring the heritage, knowledge, and beliefs of the Sámi, Europe's only Indigenous people. Semi-nomadic, the Sámi total approximately 100,000 people distributed across the Norwegian north, Finland, Sweden, and the Russian Arctic (an area they call Sápmi). They've experienced oppression, 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 belief system and founding narrative, the art also highlights the community's struggles associated with the climate crisis, loss of territory, and colonialism.

Metaphor in Materials

At the extended entrance ramp, there's a looming, 26-meter formation of pelts trapped by electrical wires. It represents a symbol for the governance and financial structures restricting the Sámi. Part pylon, part heavenly staircase, this part of the exhibit, named Goavve-, points to the Sámi name for an harsh environmental condition, wherein thick sheets of ice develop as fluctuating conditions melt and ice over the snow, encasing the reindeers' key winter sustenance, moss. The condition is a result of global heating, which is happening up to four times faster in the Far North than globally.

Three years ago, I traveled to see Sara in Guovdageaidnu during a icy season and accompanied Sámi herders on their snowmobiles in biting cold as they transported carts of animal nutrition on to the wind-scoured Arctic plains to provide through labor. These animals surrounded round us, digging the frozen ground in vain for mossy bits. This costly and labour-intensive process is having a severe effect on herding practices—and on the animals' independence. However the alternative is malnutrition. When such conditions become routine, reindeer are dying—some from hunger, others drowning after plunging into water bodies through unstable frozen surfaces. To some extent, the installation is a memorial to them. "By overlapping of components, in a way I'm transporting the phenomenon to London," says Sara.

Opposing Belief Systems

This artwork also emphasizes the clear contrast between the industrial understanding of electricity as a resource to be harnessed for gain and existence and the Sámi worldview of life force as an innate essence in animals, humans, and land. Tate Modern's history as a industrial facility is linked with this, as is what the Sámi see as environmental exploitation by Nordic countries. As they strive to be exemplars for renewable energy, these states have disagreed with the Sámi over the building of turbine fields, water power facilities, and digging operations on their native soil; the Sámi contend their fundamental freedoms, ways of life, and traditions are threatened. "It's hard being such a tiny group to defend yourself when the reasons are based on environmental protection," Sara comments. "Extractivism has adopted the language of ecology, but yet it's just attempting to find alternative ways to persist in patterns of use."

Family Challenges

She and her kin have personally clashed with the Norwegian government over its ever-stricter rules on reindeer management. A few years ago, Sara's brother undertook a sequence of unsuccessful legal cases over the required reduction of his animals, ostensibly to stop excessive feeding. To back him, Sara created a multi-year series of creations called Pile O'Sápmi including a huge screen of numerous cranial remains, which was shown at the 2017 event Documenta 14 and later obtained by the National Museum of Oslo, where it hangs in the lobby.

Creative Expression as Activism

For many Sámi, visual expression is the exclusive realm in which they can be heard by outsiders. In 2022, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|