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Visitors to the renowned gallery are used to unexpected encounters in its spacious Turbine Hall. They've sunbathed under an artificial sun, descended down helter skelters, and witnessed AI-powered sea creatures drifting through the air. However this marks the initial time they will be immersing themselves in the detailed nasal chambers of a reindeer. The newest artistic project for this cavernous space—developed by Indigenous Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—encourages visitors into a labyrinthine design modeled after the scaled-up inside of a reindeer's nose passages. Once inside, they can meander around or chill out on skins, tuning in on earphones to tribal seniors telling narratives and insights.

Why the Nose?

What's the focus on the nose? It could appear playful, but the installation honors a obscure natural marvel: experts have uncovered that in under a second, the reindeer's nose can raise the temperature of the surrounding air it inhales by 80°C, allowing the creature to thrive in inhospitable Arctic climates. Enlarging the nose to human-scale dimensions, Sara explains, "produces a sense of inferiority that you as a individual are not in control over nature." The artist is a ex- reporter, writer for kids, and land defender, who comes from a pastoral family in the Norwegian Arctic. "Possibly that generates the possibility to shift your viewpoint or evoke some humility," she states.

A Tribute to Traditional Ways

The maze-like structure is part of a elements in Sara's engaging commission showcasing the culture, science, and beliefs of the Sámi, the sole native group in Europe. Partially migratory, the Sámi number about 100,000 people ranged across northern Norway, the Finnish Arctic, the Swedish Lapland, and the Russian Arctic (an region they call Sápmi). They have faced discrimination, forced assimilation, and suppression of their language by all four states. With an emphasis on the reindeer, an animal at the center of the Sámi cosmology and origin tale, the installation also draws attention to the community's challenges associated with the environmental emergency, property rights, and colonialism.

Metaphor in Elements

On the extended access slope, there's a looming, eighty-five-foot sculpture of reindeer hides ensnared by electrical wires. It can be read as a metaphor for the governance and financial structures limiting the Sámi. Like an electrical tower, part spiritual ascent, this part of the artwork, called Goavve-, points to the Sámi word for an extreme weather phenomenon, in which dense sheets of ice develop as fluctuating conditions thaw and ice over the snow, locking in the reindeers' main winter nourishment, lichen. Goavvi is a outcome of climate change, which is happening up to much more rapidly in the Arctic than elsewhere.

Three years ago, I met with Sara in a remote town during a goavvi winter and went with Sámi pastoralists on their motorized sleds in freezing temperatures as they hauled trailers of food pellets on to the wind-scoured tundra to distribute by hand. The herd gathered round us, scratching the frozen ground in vain for mossy morsels. This expensive and laborious process is having a severe influence on reindeer husbandry—and on the animals' natural survival. But the alternative is starvation. When such conditions become routine, reindeer are succumbing—some from lack of food, others submerging after sinking in lakes and rivers through unstable frozen surfaces. On one level, the work is a memorial to them. "With the layering of components, in a way I'm transporting the phenomenon to London," says Sara.

Diverging Worldviews

The sculpture also highlights the clear divergence between the modern view of energy as a resource to be exploited for profit and livelihood and the Sámi outlook of vitality as an innate power in animals, humans, and nature. Tate Modern's history as a fossil fuel plant is linked with this, as is what the Sámi see as eco-imperialism by Scandinavian states. While attempting to be exemplars for renewable energy, these states have disagreed with the Sámi over the construction of windfarms, hydroelectric dams, and extraction sites on their traditional territory; the Sámi contend their fundamental freedoms, incomes, and way of life are threatened. "It's hard being such a tiny group to stand your ground when the reasons are grounded in saving the world," Sara comments. "Mining practices has co-opted the rhetoric of environmentalism, but still it's just aiming to find more suitable ways to continue practices of expenditure."

Individual Struggles

The artist and her relatives have themselves clashed with the national administration over its increasingly stringent rules on animal husbandry. In 2016, Sara's brother undertook a set of ultimately unsuccessful lawsuits over the forced culling of his herd, ostensibly to stop excessive feeding. As a show of solidarity, Sara created a multi-year series of creations named Pile O'Sápmi including a massive screen of four hundred reindeer skulls, which was displayed at the the art exhibition Documenta 14 and later acquired by the National Museum of Oslo, where it is displayed in the entryway.

Creative Expression as Awareness

For many Sámi, art appears the sole domain in which they can be heard by outsiders. In 2022, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|