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Guests to the renowned gallery are familiar to unexpected encounters in its expansive Turbine Hall. They have relaxed under an man-made sun, slid down spiral slides, and seen AI-powered jellyfish hovering through the air. But this marks the initial time they will be immersing themselves in the detailed nose chambers of a reindeer. The current creative installation for this huge space—designed by Native Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—encourages visitors into a winding design based on the expanded inside of a reindeer's nasal passages. Once inside, they can wander around or chill out on pelts, listening on earphones to Sámi elders sharing tales and knowledge.

Focus on the Nasal Passages

Why the nose? It may sound whimsical, but the artwork celebrates a obscure natural marvel: researchers have uncovered that in less than one second, the reindeer's nose can warm the ambient air it breathes in by 80°C, helping the creature to thrive in extreme Arctic climates. Scaling the nose to bigger than a person, Sara explains, "generates a sense of smallness that you as a individual are not in control over nature." Sara is a former journalist, children's author, and land defender, who is from a reindeer-herding family in northern Norway. "Possibly that creates the potential to shift your perspective or evoke some humbleness," she states.

A Tribute to Traditional Ways

The winding structure is among various features in Sara's immersive commission showcasing the traditions, understanding, and philosophy of the Sámi, the sole native group in Europe. Traditionally mobile, the Sámi total about 100,000 people distributed across the Norwegian north, the Finnish Arctic, Sweden, and the Russian Arctic (an territory they call Sápmi). They've endured discrimination, forced assimilation, and suppression of their language by all four countries. With an emphasis on the reindeer, an animal at the core of the Sámi belief system and origin tale, the art also highlights the community's challenges associated with the climate crisis, property rights, and imperialism.

Meaning in Elements

Along the extended access slope, there's a soaring, 26-meter formation of pelts entangled by electrical wires. It represents a symbol for the governance and financial structures limiting the Sámi. Like an electrical tower, part spiritual ascent, this component of the exhibit, called Goavve-, relates to the Sámi name for an extreme weather phenomenon, in which solid sheets of ice form as changing conditions thaw and solidify again the snow, trapping the reindeers' primary winter sustenance, lichen. This phenomenon is a result of global heating, which is occurring up to much more rapidly in the Arctic than in other regions.

A few years back, I traveled to see Sara in Guovdageaidnu during a goavvi winter and went with Sámi reindeer keepers on their motorized sleds in biting cold as they hauled trailers of animal nutrition on to the barren Arctic plains to provide through labor. These animals surrounded round us, scratching the frozen ground in vain for lichen-covered morsels. This resource-intensive and laborious process is having a significant effect on reindeer husbandry—and on the animals' independence. However the alternative is death. As goavvi winters become commonplace, reindeer are dying—some from hunger, others suffocating after falling into lakes and rivers through unstable frozen surfaces. To some extent, the work is a monument to them. "With the layering of materials, in a way I'm bringing the condition to London," says Sara.

Contrasting Perspectives

The installation also highlights the clear contrast between the industrial interpretation of power as a commodity to be harnessed for profit and survival and the Sámi outlook of vitality as an natural life force in animals, people, and the environment. Tate Modern's legacy as a fossil fuel plant is connected to this, as is what the Sámi view as eco-imperialism by Scandinavian states. As they strive to be leaders for sustainable power, Nordic nations have clashed with the Sámi over the building of turbine fields, river barriers, and mines on their traditional territory; the Sámi argue their human rights, incomes, and way of life are endangered. "It's very difficult being such a small minority to stand your ground when the arguments are grounded in global sustainability," Sara notes. "Resource exploitation has appropriated the discourse of sustainability, but still it's just attempting to find better ways to persist in patterns of consumption."

Individual Struggles

She and her relatives have themselves clashed with the Norwegian government over its increasingly stringent regulations on herding. A few years ago, Sara's sibling undertook a sequence of unsuccessful court actions over the forced culling of his livestock, apparently to stop vegetation depletion. As a show of solidarity, Sara created a multi-year series of pieces named Pile O'Sápmi comprising a massive curtain of numerous animal bones, which was shown at the 2017's event Documenta 14 and later acquired by the National Museum of Oslo, where it resides in the lobby.

Creative Expression as Advocacy

For numerous Indigenous people, art appears the only sphere in which they can be understood by outsiders. Recently, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|