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Attendees to the renowned gallery are accustomed to unusual encounters in its spacious Turbine Hall. They've sunbathed under an artificial sun, descended down spiral slides, and observed AI-powered sea creatures floating through the air. However this marks the inaugural time they will be venturing themselves in the intricate nose cavities of a reindeer. The current artist commission for this huge space—created by Native Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—invites visitors into a winding design inspired by the expanded inside of a reindeer's nasal airways. Inside, they can wander around or relax on skins, tuning in on headphones to tribal seniors sharing stories and wisdom.

Why the Nose?

What's the focus on the nose? It might seem whimsical, but the installation celebrates a little-known biological feat: scientists have discovered that in under a second, the reindeer's nose can raise the temperature of the ambient air it breathes in by eighty degrees, enabling the creature to thrive in inhospitable Arctic conditions. Expanding the nose to bigger than a person, Sara notes, "generates a feeling of inferiority that you as a individual are not dominant over nature." She is a ex- writer, young adult author, and land defender, who hails from a herding family in the Norwegian Arctic. "Possibly that generates the chance to change your viewpoint or trigger some humbleness," she continues.

A Celebration to Indigenous Heritage

The winding installation is one of several elements in Sara's engaging exhibition celebrating the heritage, understanding, and worldview of the Sámi, the sole native group in Europe. Semi-nomadic, the Sámi total about 100,000 people spread across northern Norway, Finland, the Swedish Lapland, and the Kola region (an region they call Sápmi). They have endured discrimination, forced assimilation, and repression of their language by all four states. Through highlighting the reindeer, an creature at the center of the Sámi cosmology and founding narrative, the work also draws attention to the people's issues relating to the global warming, loss of territory, and imperialism.

Symbolism in Materials

Along the lengthy entry incline, there's a looming, 26-metre sculpture of pelts entangled by electrical wires. It serves as a symbol for the political and economic systems constraining the Sámi. Part pylon, part celestial ladder, this component of the installation, called Goavve-, relates to the Sámi term for an harsh environmental condition, whereby dense layers of ice develop as varying conditions liquefy and ice over the snow, trapping the reindeers' primary winter food, fungus. Goavvi is a consequence of planetary warming, which is occurring up to at an accelerated rate in the Far North than elsewhere.

Previously, I visited Sara in a remote town during a icy season and accompanied Sámi reindeer keepers on their motorized sleds in biting cold as they transported trailers of supplementary feed on to the wind-scoured frozen landscape to dispense manually. These animals surrounded round us, pawing the icy ground in vain for vegetative bits. This expensive and labour-intensive process is having a drastic effect on animal rearing—and on the animals' self-sufficiency. But the choice is starvation. As these icy periods become frequent, reindeer are perishing—some from starvation, others submerging after falling into streams through thinning ice sheets. In a sense, the installation is a monument to them. "Through the stacking of elements, in a way I'm transporting the phenomenon to London," says Sara.

Diverging Belief Systems

This artwork also emphasizes the clear contrast between the western understanding of power as a commodity to be harnessed for economic benefit and existence and the Sámi philosophy of energy as an inherent essence in animals, people, and land. Tate Modern's history as a coal and oil power station is connected to this, as is what the Sámi see as eco-imperialism by Nordic countries. While attempting to be standard bearers for sustainable power, Nordic nations have clashed with the Sámi over the development of wind energy projects, river barriers, and extraction sites on their ancestral land; the Sámi assert their human rights, livelihoods, and traditions are threatened. "It's very difficult being such a small minority to defend yourself when the reasons are rooted in environmental protection," Sara observes. "Mining practices has appropriated the language of environmentalism, but still it's just attempting to find more suitable ways to continue patterns of use."

Family Challenges

She and her family have personally clashed with the state authorities over its tightening rules on animal husbandry. A few years ago, Sara's brother initiated a series of finally failed legal cases over the mandatory slaughter of his animals, apparently to stop excessive feeding. As a show of solidarity, Sara created a extended series of pieces called Pile O'Sápmi featuring a massive drape of four hundred cranial remains, which was exhibited at the 2017 event Documenta 14 and later obtained by the National Museum of Oslo, where it resides in the lobby.

Art as Advocacy

Among the community, visual expression seems the only sphere in which they can be understood by people of other nations. In 2022, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|