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Guests to the renowned gallery are familiar to surprising experiences in its expansive Turbine Hall. They have relaxed under an artificial sun, slid down helter skelters, and witnessed AI-powered sea creatures floating through the air. Yet this marks the first time they will be engaging themselves in the intricate nose cavities of a reindeer. The latest creative installation for this huge space—developed by Indigenous Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—welcomes visitors into a maze-like construction based on the expanded interior of a reindeer's nasal airways. Upon entering, they can stroll around or chill out on reindeer hides, tuning in on earphones to community leaders telling stories and knowledge.

Focus on the Nasal Passages

Why choose the nasal structure? It may sound whimsical, but the exhibit celebrates a little-known scientific wonder: scientists have discovered that in under a second, the reindeer's nose can warm the incoming air it breathes in by 80 degrees celsius, helping the creature to thrive in inhospitable Arctic temperatures. Enlarging the nose to bigger than a person, Sara says, "produces a perception of insignificance that you as a individual are not in control over nature." Sara is a former reporter, children's author, and environmental activist, who hails from a reindeer-herding family in the Norwegian Arctic. "Maybe that fosters the potential to shift your outlook or trigger some humility," she continues.

An Homage to Sámi Culture

The maze-like structure is part of a elements in Sara's absorbing art project honoring the culture, understanding, and worldview of the Sámi, the sole native group in Europe. Partially migratory, the Sámi number about 100,000 people spread across the Norwegian north, the Finnish Arctic, Sweden, and Russia's Kola Peninsula (an territory they call Sápmi). They have faced persecution, integration policies, and suppression of their tongue by all four states. With an emphasis on the reindeer, an animal at the core of the Sámi belief system and founding narrative, the art also highlights the community's issues relating to the global warming, land dispossession, and imperialism.

Metaphor in Materials

At the lengthy entrance slope, there's a looming, 26-meter formation of skins entangled by electrical wires. It represents a analogy for the political and economic systems constraining the Sámi. Partly a utility pole, part spiritual ascent, this part of the installation, named Goavve-, points to the Sámi term for an extreme weather phenomenon, whereby dense layers of ice form as varying conditions liquefy and refreeze the snow, trapping the reindeers' key winter nourishment, lichen. This phenomenon is a outcome of planetary warming, which is occurring up to much more rapidly in the Arctic than globally.

Previously, I visited Sara in a remote town during a goavvi winter and accompanied Sámi herders on their motorized sleds in chilly conditions as they carried trailers of animal nutrition on to the wind-scoured Arctic plains to provide through labor. The herd crowded round us, digging the icy ground in vain for lichen-covered bits. This resource-intensive and demanding process is having a severe impact on herding practices—and on the animals' natural survival. But the alternative is malnutrition. When such conditions become routine, reindeer are perishing—some from starvation, others suffocating after plunging into streams through thinning ice sheets. To some extent, the installation is a memorial to them. "With the layering of elements, in a way I'm bringing the condition to London," says Sara.

Diverging Worldviews

The sculpture also highlights the clear divergence between the western understanding of power as a resource to be exploited for economic benefit and survival and the Sámi philosophy of life force as an innate life force in creatures, individuals, and nature. Tate Modern's past as a fossil fuel plant is connected to this, as is what the Sámi consider eco-imperialism by Nordic countries. While attempting to be standard bearers for renewable energy, Scandinavian countries have disagreed with the Sámi over the development of windfarms, river barriers, and mines on their native soil; the Sámi assert their human rights, incomes, and traditions are at risk. "It's very difficult being such a tiny group to defend yourself when the arguments are based on global sustainability," Sara comments. "Mining practices has co-opted the language of sustainability, but nonetheless it's just aiming to find more suitable ways to persist in habits of expenditure."

Personal Challenges

The artist and her kin have themselves disagreed with the Norwegian government over its ever-stricter rules on herding. A few years ago, Sara's sibling initiated a set of unsuccessful legal cases over the forced culling of his herd, supposedly to stop vegetation depletion. As a show of solidarity, Sara produced a extended set of artworks named Pile O'Sápmi comprising a colossal curtain of four hundred reindeer skulls, which was exhibited at the 2017's show Documenta 14 and later acquired by the national institution, where it resides in the lobby.

The Role of Art in Awareness

For many Sámi, art appears the exclusive sphere in which they can be heard by the global community. In 2022, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|