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Attendees to the renowned gallery are used to surprising displays in its expansive Turbine Hall. They've relaxed under an simulated sun, glided down helter skelters, and witnessed robotic jellyfish floating through the air. But this marks the first time they will be immersing themselves in the intricate nasal passages of a reindeer. The latest creative installation for this huge space—designed by Native Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—invites gallerygoers into a maze-like design modeled after the enlarged inside of a reindeer's nose airways. Inside, they can meander around or unwind on reindeer hides, tuning in on earphones to community leaders telling narratives and knowledge.

Focus on the Nasal Passages

What's the focus on the nose? It could sound playful, but the exhibit pays tribute to a rarely recognized biological feat: experts have discovered that in a fraction of a second, the reindeer's nose can heat the surrounding air it breathes in by 80 degrees celsius, enabling the animal to endure in harsh Arctic climates. Enlarging the nose to human-scale dimensions, Sara explains, "creates a feeling of smallness that you as a human being are not dominant over nature." Sara is a ex- writer, young adult author, and land defender, who is from a herding family in northern Norway. "Possibly that generates the potential to change your outlook or spark some humility," she states.

A Celebration to Sámi Culture

The maze-like structure is one of several features in Sara's engaging commission celebrating the culture, understanding, and beliefs of the Sámi, Europe's only Indigenous people. Traditionally mobile, the Sámi number about 100,000 people ranged across the Norwegian north, Finland, Sweden, and Russia's Kola Peninsula (an region they call Sápmi). They have endured persecution, integration policies, and repression of their dialect by all four states. With an emphasis on the reindeer, an animal at the core of the Sámi cosmology and founding narrative, the work also draws attention to the group's issues relating to the global warming, land dispossession, and external control.

Meaning in Materials

Along the lengthy entrance ramp, there's a soaring, 26-metre structure of skins ensnared by electrical wires. It serves as a analogy for the societal frameworks constraining the Sámi. Partly a utility pole, part heavenly staircase, this section of the artwork, called Goavve-, points to the Sámi term for an severe climatic event, wherein thick layers of ice appear as changing conditions liquefy and solidify again the snow, locking in the reindeers' main cold-season food, lichen. This phenomenon is a consequence of climate change, which is taking place up to at an accelerated rate in the Polar region than globally.

Previously, I traveled to see Sara in Guovdageaidnu during a severe cold period and joined Sámi reindeer keepers on their Arctic vehicles in biting cold as they transported trailers of supplementary feed on to the barren tundra to distribute manually. The herd crowded round us, digging the icy ground in vain attempts for mossy morsels. This resource-intensive and laborious process is having a drastic influence on animal rearing—and on the animals' self-sufficiency. But the other option is malnutrition. When such conditions become commonplace, reindeer are succumbing—some from lack of food, others submerging after plunging into water bodies through unstable frozen surfaces. In a sense, the installation is a monument to them. "By overlapping of components, in a way I'm bringing the condition to London," says Sara.

Contrasting Perspectives

The installation also emphasizes the clear contrast between the industrial understanding of energy as a asset to be harnessed for economic benefit and existence and the Sámi philosophy of life force as an innate power in creatures, humans, and land. Tate Modern's history as a coal and oil power station is tied up in this, as is what the Sámi see as green colonialism by Scandinavian states. As they strive to be standard bearers for sustainable power, Scandinavian countries have locked horns with the Sámi over the construction of windfarms, water power facilities, and mines on their native soil; the Sámi assert their human rights, livelihoods, and culture are at risk. "It's very difficult being such a limited population to stand your ground when the reasons are based on environmental protection," Sara observes. "Extractivism has appropriated the discourse of environmentalism, but nonetheless it's just striving to find better ways to continue patterns of consumption."

Family Struggles

The artist and her family have personally conflicted with the national administration over its ever-stricter rules on reindeer management. Previously, Sara's sibling undertook a set of ultimately unsuccessful lawsuits over the forced culling of his herd, apparently to stop excessive feeding. To back him, Sara created a four-year set of creations titled Pile O'Sápmi including a colossal drape of 400 animal bones, which was displayed at the 2017's show Documenta 14 and later purchased by the National Museum of Oslo, where it hangs in the lobby.

Art as Advocacy

For numerous Indigenous people, creative work seems the only domain in which they can be understood by people of other nations. In 2022, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|