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Guests to the renowned gallery are used to unexpected experiences in its vast Turbine Hall. They have basked under an man-made sun, slid down amusement rides, and seen automated jellyfish hovering through the air. However this marks the initial time they will be venturing themselves in the complex nose passages of a reindeer. The newest artist commission for this huge space—developed by Indigenous Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—welcomes gallerygoers into a winding design based on the expanded inside of a reindeer's nose passages. Inside, they can stroll around or chill out on pelts, tuning in on headphones to community leaders sharing stories and insights.

The Significance of the Nose

What's the focus on the nose? It might sound whimsical, but the exhibit celebrates a rarely recognized natural marvel: experts have found that in a fraction of a second, the reindeer's nose can raise the temperature of the ambient air it takes in by 80°C, enabling the creature to endure in inhospitable Arctic climates. Expanding the nose to human-scale dimensions, Sara says, "produces a sense of insignificance that you as a person are not dominant over nature." Sara is a former journalist, writer for kids, and rights advocate, who comes from a pastoral family in northern Norway. "Possibly that fosters the potential to shift your outlook or spark some humbleness," she states.

A Celebration to Sámi Culture

The maze-like structure is among various components in Sara's absorbing art project celebrating the heritage, science, and philosophy of the Sámi, the sole native group in Europe. Semi-nomadic, the Sámi count about 100,000 people spread across the Norwegian north, Finland, Sweden, and the Russian Arctic (an region they call Sápmi). They have experienced discrimination, integration policies, and eradication of their dialect by all four nations. With an emphasis on the reindeer, an animal at the center of the Sámi belief system and creation story, the art also highlights the people's challenges connected to the global warming, property rights, and imperialism.

Symbolism in Components

On the long entrance slope, there's a soaring, eighty-five-foot formation of skins trapped by utility lines. It represents a analogy for the political and economic systems limiting the Sámi. Part pylon, part spiritual ascent, this part of the artwork, titled Goavve-, refers to the Sámi word for an severe climatic event, in which dense sheets of ice form as changing conditions liquefy and solidify again the snow, encasing the reindeers' primary winter sustenance, moss. Goavvi is a consequence of planetary warming, which is happening up to much more rapidly in the Polar region than globally.

Previously, I met with Sara in a remote town during a severe cold period and joined Sámi pastoralists on their snowmobiles in freezing temperatures as they hauled containers of supplementary feed on to the barren Arctic plains to dispense manually. The reindeer crowded round us, pawing the slippery ground in vain for vegetative pieces. This resource-intensive and demanding method is having a severe effect on herding practices—and on the animals' self-sufficiency. Yet the alternative is malnutrition. As these icy periods become frequent, reindeer are dying—some from lack of food, others drowning after falling into water bodies through prematurely melting ice. On one level, the installation is a monument to them. "By overlapping of components, in a way I'm transporting the goavvi to London," says Sara.

Opposing Worldviews

The installation also highlights the sharp difference between the industrial interpretation of power as a asset to be exploited for economic benefit and existence and the Sámi worldview of life force as an inherent life force in creatures, individuals, and the environment. Tate Modern's legacy as a coal and oil power station is connected to this, as is what the Sámi view as environmental exploitation by regional governments. While attempting to be standard bearers for clean sources, these states have locked horns with the Sámi over the building of windfarms, hydroelectric dams, and digging operations on their traditional territory; the Sámi contend their fundamental freedoms, ways of life, and way of life are endangered. "It's very difficult being such a small minority to defend yourself when the reasons are grounded in global sustainability," Sara comments. "Extractivism has co-opted the language of environmentalism, but nonetheless it's just attempting to find more suitable ways to maintain patterns of use."

Personal Conflicts

She and her relatives have personally disagreed with the Norwegian government over its tightening rules on herding. Previously, Sara's sibling initiated a sequence of ultimately unsuccessful legal cases over the mandatory slaughter of his livestock, apparently to stop overgrazing. In support, Sara created a multi-year collection of pieces called Pile O'Sápmi including a huge curtain of 400 cranial remains, which was shown at the the show Documenta 14 and later acquired by the national institution, where it hangs in the entryway.

Art as Advocacy

For numerous Indigenous people, visual expression seems the sole realm in which they can be understood by outsiders. In 2022, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|