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Attendees to the renowned gallery are familiar to unexpected encounters in its spacious Turbine Hall. They have basked under an simulated sun, glided down helter skelters, and seen automated jellyfish floating through the air. Yet this marks the initial time they will be immersing themselves in the intricate nasal passages of a reindeer. The current artistic project for this immense space—created by Indigenous Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—welcomes visitors into a winding construction modeled after the expanded inside of a reindeer's nose airways. Once inside, they can wander around or relax on reindeer hides, listening on earphones to community leaders sharing stories and insights.

Focus on the Nasal Passages

Why the nose? It could seem quirky, but the installation celebrates a obscure scientific wonder: researchers have uncovered that in under a second, the reindeer's nose can heat the surrounding air it breathes in by 80 degrees celsius, helping the animal to endure in extreme Arctic climates. Enlarging the nose to human-scale dimensions, Sara says, "creates a feeling of insignificance that you as a individual are not dominant over nature." She is a former journalist, young adult author, and environmental activist, who hails from a herding family in northern Norway. "Possibly that fosters the chance to alter your perspective or trigger some humility," she adds.

A Tribute to Traditional Ways

The maze-like design is among various elements in Sara's absorbing art project honoring the culture, science, and philosophy of the Sámi, the continent's original inhabitants. Semi-nomadic, the Sámi total about 100,000 people distributed across the Norwegian north, the Finnish Arctic, the Swedish Lapland, and the Kola region (an territory they call Sápmi). They've endured discrimination, 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 mythology and creation story, the art also highlights the community's issues associated with the environmental emergency, loss of territory, and imperialism.

Meaning in Materials

Along the extended access slope, there's a towering, 26-metre sculpture of skins trapped by utility lines. It can be read as a analogy for the societal frameworks restricting the Sámi. Partly a utility pole, part heavenly staircase, this component of the exhibit, called Goavve-, refers to the Sámi name for an extreme weather phenomenon, whereby thick coatings of ice develop as changing conditions thaw and solidify again the snow, locking in the reindeers' key winter food, moss. The condition is a result of climate change, which is happening up to much more rapidly in the Far North than globally.

Three years ago, I met with Sara in the Norwegian far north during a severe cold period and joined Sámi pastoralists on their snowmobiles in biting cold as they hauled trailers of animal nutrition on to the wind-scoured tundra to distribute manually. The reindeer crowded round us, digging the icy ground in vain for vegetative bits. This costly and laborious method is having a significant effect on animal rearing—and on the animals' natural survival. However the other option is malnutrition. As goavvi winters become commonplace, reindeer are perishing—a number from hunger, others drowning after falling into streams through unstable frozen surfaces. To some extent, the work is a tribute to them. "Through the stacking of materials, in a way I'm bringing the condition to London," says Sara.

Contrasting Worldviews

The installation also underscores the stark contrast between the industrial understanding of electricity as a resource to be exploited for gain and existence and the Sámi outlook of energy as an innate essence in creatures, people, and the environment. Tate Modern's history as a coal and oil power station is tied up in this, as is what the Sámi view as eco-imperialism by regional governments. While attempting to be leaders for clean sources, these states have disagreed with the Sámi over the construction of windfarms, hydroelectric dams, and digging operations on their ancestral land; the Sámi contend their human rights, incomes, and way of life are at risk. "It's very difficult being such a limited population to protect your rights when the arguments are grounded in global sustainability," Sara notes. "Resource exploitation has appropriated the language of ecology, but nonetheless it's just attempting to find more suitable ways to persist in habits of expenditure."

Family Challenges

Sara and her relatives have themselves conflicted with the Norwegian government over its tightening regulations on animal husbandry. In 2016, Sara's sibling embarked on a series of ultimately unsuccessful lawsuits over the required reduction of his animals, supposedly to stop overgrazing. In support, Sara developed a multi-year collection of artworks called Pile O'Sápmi comprising a massive curtain of 400 cranial remains, which was exhibited at the 2017's event Documenta 14 and later purchased by the national institution, where it hangs in the lobby.

Creative Expression as Awareness

For numerous Indigenous people, art is the only sphere in which they can be listened to by outsiders. In 2022, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|