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Attendees to the renowned gallery are familiar to unusual encounters in its vast Turbine Hall. They've basked under an artificial sun, glided down spiral slides, and seen AI-powered sea creatures drifting through the air. But this marks the first time they will be venturing themselves in the intricate nasal passages of a reindeer. The latest artistic project for this immense space—designed by Native Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—encourages visitors into a labyrinthine construction modeled after the enlarged inside of a reindeer's nasal airways. Upon entering, they can wander around or unwind on pelts, listening on earphones to Sámi elders sharing stories and wisdom.

Focus on the Nasal Passages

Why the nose? It could appear whimsical, but the installation pays tribute to a obscure scientific wonder: scientists have found that in less than one second, the reindeer's nose can warm the ambient air it inhales by 80°C, helping the animal to thrive in extreme Arctic conditions. Enlarging the nose to bigger than a person, Sara notes, "produces a perception of inferiority that you as a individual are not in control over nature." The artist is a former writer, children's author, and rights advocate, who hails from a reindeer-herding family in the Norwegian Arctic. "Possibly that generates the potential to change your viewpoint or evoke some modesty," she adds.

An Homage to Traditional Ways

The labyrinthine design is part of a features in Sara's engaging commission showcasing the traditions, understanding, and beliefs of the Sámi, the sole native group in Europe. Partially migratory, the Sámi total roughly 100,000 people ranged across northern Norway, Finland, the Swedish Lapland, and Russia's Kola Peninsula (an territory they call Sápmi). They've endured discrimination, integration policies, and suppression of their tongue by all four states. By focusing on the reindeer, an animal at the heart of the Sámi belief system and origin tale, the work also spotlights the group's issues connected to the climate crisis, land dispossession, and external control.

Symbolism in Materials

Along the long entry ramp, there's a looming, 26-meter sculpture of skins entangled by electrical wires. It can be read as a metaphor for the political and economic systems restricting the Sámi. Part pylon, part heavenly staircase, this component of the installation, named Goavve-, relates to the Sámi name for an harsh environmental condition, wherein thick layers of ice form as changing conditions thaw and refreeze the snow, trapping the reindeers' primary cold-season food, lichen. This phenomenon is a outcome of climate change, which is occurring up to much more rapidly in the Arctic than globally.

Three years ago, I traveled to see Sara in a remote town during a icy season and accompanied Sámi pastoralists on their Arctic vehicles in freezing temperatures as they hauled containers of food pellets on to the barren frozen landscape to dispense manually. These animals gathered round us, scratching the frozen ground in vain attempts for vegetative bits. This resource-intensive and demanding procedure is having a significant impact on animal rearing—and on the animals' self-sufficiency. But the other option is malnutrition. As goavvi winters become frequent, reindeer are dying—a number from hunger, others drowning after plunging into water bodies through thinning ice sheets. To some extent, the installation is a memorial to them. "By overlapping of materials, in a way I'm transporting the condition to London," says Sara.

Diverging Worldviews

The installation also underscores the clear difference between the modern interpretation of electricity as a commodity to be utilized for gain and existence and the Sámi philosophy of energy as an inherent essence in creatures, humans, and nature. Tate Modern's past as a industrial facility is connected to this, as is what the Sámi consider environmental exploitation by Nordic countries. While attempting to be leaders for renewable energy, Nordic nations have disagreed with the Sámi over the construction of windfarms, hydroelectric dams, and digging operations on their ancestral land; the Sámi contend their fundamental freedoms, incomes, and culture are at risk. "It's hard being such a tiny group to stand your ground when the arguments are rooted in global sustainability," Sara observes. "Extractivism has appropriated the language of ecology, but yet it's just aiming to find more suitable ways to maintain practices of expenditure."

Family Conflicts

Sara and her family have personally disagreed with the state authorities over its increasingly stringent policies on herding. Previously, Sara's sibling initiated a set of ultimately unsuccessful legal cases over the mandatory slaughter of his herd, supposedly to stop vegetation depletion. In support, Sara created a extended collection of creations titled Pile O'Sápmi including a colossal drape of four hundred animal bones, which was shown at the the art exhibition Documenta 14 and later obtained by the public gallery, where it hangs in the entryway.

The Role of Art in Activism

For numerous Indigenous people, creative work is the sole sphere in which they can be understood by outsiders. Recently, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|