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Visitors to the renowned gallery are accustomed to unexpected encounters in its expansive Turbine Hall. They have relaxed under an simulated sun, descended down spiral slides, and observed AI-powered jellyfish hovering through the air. Yet this marks the inaugural time they will be venturing themselves in the intricate nasal chambers of a reindeer. The current artistic project for this immense space—developed by Indigenous Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—invites gallerygoers into a maze-like structure modeled after the expanded inside of a reindeer's nose cavities. Once inside, they can wander around or chill out on pelts, tuning in on headphones to Sámi elders sharing stories and wisdom.

The Significance of the Nose

What's the focus on the nose? It may sound whimsical, but the exhibit pays tribute to a obscure biological feat: experts have discovered that in under a second, the reindeer's nose can heat the surrounding air it takes in by eighty degrees, allowing the creature to survive in harsh Arctic conditions. Scaling the nose to bigger than a person, Sara notes, "generates a feeling of inferiority that you as a individual are not superior over nature." She is a former journalist, young adult author, and land defender, who hails from a reindeer-herding family in northern Norway. "Maybe that generates the chance to shift your perspective or trigger some humility," she continues.

A Tribute to Indigenous Heritage

The maze-like installation is among various features in Sara's absorbing commission showcasing the traditions, science, and beliefs of the Sámi, the sole native group in Europe. Semi-nomadic, the Sámi number about 100,000 people ranged across the Norwegian north, the Finnish Arctic, the Swedish Lapland, and the Russian Arctic (an territory they call Sápmi). They've experienced oppression, cultural suppression, and repression of their tongue by all four states. By focusing on the reindeer, an creature at the heart of the Sámi belief system and founding narrative, the installation also spotlights the people's challenges connected to the environmental emergency, loss of territory, and imperialism.

Meaning in Elements

On the long entry ramp, there's a soaring, eighty-five-foot formation of pelts ensnared by utility lines. It can be read as a analogy for the governance and financial structures constraining the Sámi. Like an electrical tower, part spiritual ascent, this part of the installation, named Goavve-, points to the Sámi term for an severe climatic event, whereby solid coatings of ice develop as changing weather liquefy and solidify again the snow, trapping the reindeers' key cold-season sustenance, lichen. This phenomenon is a outcome of climate change, which is happening up to much more rapidly in the Arctic than globally.

Three years ago, I met with Sara in a remote town during a severe cold period and joined Sámi reindeer keepers on their snowmobiles in biting cold as they transported trailers of supplementary feed on to the barren Arctic plains to dispense through labor. The herd surrounded round us, digging the frozen ground in futility for lichen-covered pieces. This resource-intensive and labour-intensive method is having a severe influence on animal rearing—and on the animals' natural survival. However the choice is starvation. When such conditions become frequent, reindeer are succumbing—a number from lack of food, others submerging after plunging into streams through unstable frozen surfaces. To some extent, the installation is a memorial to them. "Through the stacking of materials, in a way I'm introducing the goavvi to London," says Sara.

Diverging Worldviews

The installation also underscores the stark difference between the industrial interpretation of energy as a resource to be utilized for economic benefit and livelihood and the Sámi worldview of vitality as an natural life force in creatures, people, and the environment. Tate Modern's past as a fossil fuel plant is linked with this, as is what the Sámi see as environmental exploitation by Scandinavian states. While attempting to be standard bearers for renewable energy, Scandinavian countries have disagreed with the Sámi over the development of turbine fields, river barriers, and mines on their ancestral land; the Sámi argue their legal protections, livelihoods, and culture are threatened. "It's challenging being such a tiny group to protect your rights when the justifications are rooted in environmental protection," Sara comments. "Resource exploitation has co-opted the rhetoric of environmentalism, but yet it's just aiming to find better ways to maintain habits of consumption."

Personal Conflicts

She and her kin have themselves disagreed with the state authorities over its increasingly stringent regulations on animal husbandry. In 2016, Sara's brother embarked on a series of ultimately unsuccessful legal cases over the forced culling of his herd, supposedly to stop excessive feeding. To back him, Sara developed a four-year series of creations called Pile O'Sápmi featuring a massive drape of 400 animal bones, which was exhibited at the 2017 show Documenta 14 and later purchased by the National Museum of Oslo, where it resides in the entrance.

Creative Expression as Awareness

Among the community, visual expression is the exclusive domain in which they can be listened to by people of other nations. In 2022, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|