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Visitors to the renowned gallery are familiar to surprising encounters in its expansive Turbine Hall. They have relaxed under an artificial sun, slid down spiral slides, and witnessed robotic sea creatures hovering through the air. But this marks the first time they will be immersing themselves in the complex nose cavities of a reindeer. The newest artist commission for this immense space—developed by Indigenous Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—encourages gallerygoers into a winding structure inspired by the enlarged inside of a reindeer's nose airways. Once inside, they can meander around or chill out on reindeer hides, listening on headphones to tribal seniors telling narratives and wisdom.

Focus on the Nasal Passages

Why the nose? It could appear playful, but the installation pays tribute to a obscure natural marvel: experts have discovered that in under a second, the reindeer's nose can warm the ambient air it takes in by 80°C, helping the animal to endure in harsh Arctic climates. Expanding the nose to human-scale dimensions, Sara explains, "creates a sense of insignificance that you as a human being are not dominant over nature." She is a former reporter, young adult author, and rights advocate, who is from a reindeer-herding family in the far north of Norway. "Maybe that fosters the potential to change your viewpoint or evoke some humility," she continues.

An Homage to Traditional Ways

The winding design is one of several components in Sara's absorbing commission showcasing the culture, science, and philosophy of the Sámi, the sole native group in Europe. Traditionally mobile, the Sámi total roughly 100,000 people spread across the Norwegian north, Finland, Sweden, and Russia's Kola Peninsula (an region they call Sápmi). They've endured persecution, cultural suppression, and eradication of their dialect by all four states. Through highlighting the reindeer, an creature at the core of the Sámi belief system and origin tale, the installation also draws attention to the people's struggles relating to the global warming, land dispossession, and external control.

Meaning in Components

At the long access ramp, there's a looming, 26-meter structure of pelts ensnared by electrical wires. It represents a symbol for the political and economic systems restricting the Sámi. Like an electrical tower, part heavenly staircase, this part of the artwork, named Goavve-, points to the Sámi name for an severe climatic event, in which thick coatings of ice develop as changing weather melt and solidify again the snow, encasing the reindeers' key winter food, lichen. Goavvi is a outcome of climate change, which is happening up to much more rapidly in the Far North than globally.

Previously, I traveled to see Sara in Guovdageaidnu during a icy season and joined Sámi herders on their motorized sleds in biting cold as they transported containers of supplementary feed on to the barren frozen landscape to distribute by hand. These animals crowded round us, scratching the frozen ground in vain attempts for vegetative morsels. This costly and labour-intensive process is having a severe influence on reindeer husbandry—and on the animals' self-sufficiency. However the other option is starvation. As these icy periods become routine, reindeer are dying—a number from hunger, others drowning after sinking in lakes and rivers through thinning ice sheets. In a sense, the art is a memorial to them. "Through the stacking of elements, in a way I'm bringing the phenomenon to London," says Sara.

Diverging Worldviews

The installation also highlights the clear divergence between the modern interpretation of electricity as a resource to be exploited for economic benefit and livelihood and the Sámi worldview of energy as an inherent life force in animals, people, and nature. Tate Modern's legacy as a coal and oil power station is tied up in this, as is what the Sámi see as environmental exploitation by regional governments. In their efforts to be exemplars for clean sources, these states have locked horns with the Sámi over the development of turbine fields, hydroelectric dams, and extraction sites on their native soil; the Sámi contend their human rights, ways of life, and traditions are threatened. "It's hard being such a limited population to protect your rights when the arguments are based on environmental protection," Sara observes. "Resource exploitation has co-opted the rhetoric of sustainability, but yet it's just aiming to find better ways to maintain practices of expenditure."

Individual Challenges

Sara and her kin have themselves conflicted with the Norwegian government over its ever-stricter rules on animal husbandry. In 2016, Sara's brother initiated a sequence of finally failed lawsuits over the required reduction of his livestock, ostensibly to stop vegetation depletion. To back him, Sara produced a extended series of creations named Pile O'Sápmi featuring a huge screen of four hundred cranial remains, which was displayed at the 2017's event Documenta 14 and later acquired by the National Museum of Oslo, where it hangs in the entryway.

Art as Advocacy

Among the community, visual expression appears the only domain in which they can be understood by the global community. In 2022, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|