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Guests to the renowned gallery are familiar to unexpected displays in its expansive Turbine Hall. They've relaxed under an artificial sun, slid down amusement rides, and observed automated jellyfish floating through the air. But this marks the inaugural time they will be venturing themselves in the intricate nose passages of a reindeer. The current artist commission for this immense space—created by Native Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—invites visitors into a winding design modeled after the expanded interior of a reindeer's nasal airways. Once inside, they can wander around or unwind on skins, tuning in on headphones to tribal seniors sharing tales and knowledge.

The Significance of the Nose

What's the focus on the nose? It may seem playful, but the exhibit pays tribute to a obscure natural marvel: experts have found that in a fraction of a second, the reindeer's nose can warm the ambient air it inhales by eighty degrees, allowing the animal to thrive in harsh Arctic conditions. Expanding the nose to human-scale dimensions, Sara notes, "creates a sense of smallness that you as a person are not in control over nature." Sara is a former reporter, young adult author, and rights advocate, who is from a pastoral family in northern Norway. "Maybe that fosters the potential to shift your perspective or spark some humility," she adds.

An Homage to Sámi Culture

The labyrinthine installation is among various features in Sara's absorbing art project celebrating the traditions, science, and philosophy of the Sámi, the continent's original inhabitants. Partially migratory, the Sámi count about 100,000 people distributed across northern Norway, the Finnish Arctic, Sweden, and the Kola region (an territory they call Sápmi). They have faced oppression, forced assimilation, and repression of their dialect by all four states. By focusing on the reindeer, an creature at the core of the Sámi mythology and origin tale, the work also highlights the group's challenges relating to the global warming, loss of territory, and colonialism.

Metaphor in Elements

Along the extended entrance slope, there's a soaring, 26-meter structure of skins trapped by utility lines. It serves as a analogy for the societal frameworks constraining the Sámi. Partly a utility pole, part celestial ladder, this part of the installation, named Goavve-, points to the Sámi name for an severe climatic event, in which thick layers of ice form as changing weather liquefy and solidify again the snow, locking in the reindeers' key cold-season nourishment, moss. The condition is a outcome of global heating, which is taking place up to at an accelerated rate in the Polar region than globally.

A few years back, I traveled to see Sara in Guovdageaidnu during a icy season and went with Sámi reindeer keepers on their snowmobiles in chilly conditions as they transported containers of supplementary feed on to the barren frozen landscape to distribute by hand. These animals gathered round us, pawing the icy ground in vain for mossy morsels. This expensive and laborious process is having a drastic impact on reindeer husbandry—and on the animals' independence. However the other option is malnutrition. As goavvi winters become frequent, reindeer are succumbing—some from lack of food, others drowning after falling into streams through thinning ice sheets. To some extent, the installation is a memorial to them. "By overlapping of materials, in a way I'm transporting the phenomenon to London," says Sara.

Contrasting Perspectives

The installation also underscores the stark difference between the western understanding of energy as a commodity to be harnessed for economic benefit and survival and the Sámi philosophy of vitality as an natural essence in animals, humans, and nature. Tate Modern's past as a coal and oil power station is connected to this, as is what the Sámi consider environmental exploitation by Scandinavian states. While attempting to be leaders for renewable energy, Nordic nations have disagreed with the Sámi over the construction of turbine fields, hydroelectric dams, and extraction sites on their traditional territory; the Sámi argue their human rights, ways of life, and traditions are threatened. "It's challenging being such a tiny group to defend yourself when the reasons are grounded in environmental protection," Sara notes. "Extractivism has adopted the language of sustainability, but nonetheless it's just attempting to find better ways to persist in habits of expenditure."

Family Conflicts

She and her family have themselves conflicted with the national administration over its increasingly stringent regulations on animal husbandry. In 2016, Sara's brother initiated a set of unsuccessful lawsuits over the forced culling of his herd, apparently to stop vegetation depletion. To back him, Sara produced a multi-year set of pieces named Pile O'Sápmi comprising a massive screen of four hundred reindeer skulls, which was shown at the 2017 event Documenta 14 and later acquired by the public gallery, where it hangs in the lobby.

Art as Awareness

For many Sámi, visual expression seems the sole realm in which they can be heard by the global community. In 2022, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|