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Visitors to the renowned gallery are used to unexpected displays in its expansive Turbine Hall. They have relaxed under an man-made sun, descended down helter skelters, and witnessed automated sea creatures hovering through the air. But this marks the inaugural time they will be immersing themselves in the complex nasal chambers of a reindeer. The newest creative installation for this cavernous space—designed by Indigenous Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—encourages visitors into a labyrinthine construction based on the enlarged inside of a reindeer's nose passages. Once inside, they can stroll around or unwind on pelts, tuning in on headphones to Sámi elders sharing narratives and insights.

The Significance of the Nose

What's the focus on the nose? It could sound whimsical, but the artwork pays tribute to a little-known scientific wonder: experts have uncovered that in under a second, the reindeer's nose can heat the ambient air it takes in by eighty degrees, enabling the creature to endure in extreme Arctic climates. Expanding the nose to larger than human size, Sara says, "produces a feeling of smallness that you as a human being are not superior over nature." Sara is a former journalist, young adult author, and environmental activist, who hails from a herding family in northern Norway. "Possibly that generates the potential to alter your outlook or spark some modesty," she states.

An Homage to Traditional Ways

The labyrinthine installation is among various components in Sara's engaging commission showcasing the culture, understanding, and philosophy of the Sámi, Europe's only Indigenous people. Traditionally mobile, the Sámi count approximately 100,000 people spread across northern Norway, Finland, Sweden, and Russia's Kola Peninsula (an region they call Sápmi). They've faced persecution, forced assimilation, and suppression of their language by all four nations. With an emphasis on the reindeer, an creature at the core of the Sámi cosmology and creation story, the installation also highlights the group's issues relating to the environmental emergency, land dispossession, and external control.

Meaning in Elements

On the long entrance incline, there's a towering, 26-meter sculpture of pelts ensnared by power and light cables. It represents a analogy for the governance and financial structures restricting the Sámi. Like an electrical tower, part spiritual ascent, this part of the exhibit, titled Goavve-, points to the Sámi word for an harsh environmental condition, in which thick sheets of ice form as fluctuating temperatures thaw and refreeze the snow, trapping the reindeers' key winter sustenance, fungus. Goavvi is a consequence of global heating, which is occurring up to at an accelerated rate in the Far North than globally.

A few years back, I traveled to see Sara in a remote town during a icy season and joined Sámi pastoralists on their Arctic vehicles in biting cold as they carried trailers of supplementary feed on to the barren Arctic plains to distribute manually. The herd crowded round us, digging the icy ground in futility for mossy pieces. This expensive and laborious method is having a severe influence on herding practices—and on the animals' self-sufficiency. Yet the other option is malnutrition. When such conditions become commonplace, reindeer are perishing—a number from lack of food, others submerging after falling into lakes and rivers through prematurely melting ice. In a sense, the work is a tribute to them. "With the layering of materials, in a way I'm transporting the condition to London," says Sara.

Opposing Perspectives

This artwork also emphasizes the sharp difference between the western understanding of power as a commodity to be exploited for economic benefit and existence and the Sámi outlook of vitality as an natural life force in animals, humans, and land. Tate Modern's past as a coal and oil power station is tied up in this, as is what the Sámi view as green colonialism by Scandinavian states. As they strive to be leaders for clean sources, Scandinavian countries have locked horns with the Sámi over the development of wind energy projects, river barriers, and extraction sites on their traditional territory; the Sámi contend their fundamental freedoms, ways of life, and culture are endangered. "It's hard being such a small minority to defend yourself when the justifications are grounded in saving the world," Sara observes. "Mining practices has appropriated the discourse of environmentalism, but yet it's just attempting to find better ways to continue patterns of expenditure."

Personal Challenges

Sara and her kin have themselves clashed with the national administration over its increasingly stringent policies on animal husbandry. In 2016, Sara's brother initiated a set of unsuccessful lawsuits over the forced culling of his animals, apparently to stop excessive feeding. In support, Sara developed a multi-year set of pieces named Pile O'Sápmi featuring a colossal curtain of numerous animal bones, which was exhibited at the the show Documenta 14 and later obtained by the national institution, where it resides in the lobby.

The Role of Art in Advocacy

For numerous Indigenous people, creative work seems the exclusive domain in which they can be heard by the global community. In 2022, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|