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Attendees to the renowned gallery are used to surprising encounters in its expansive Turbine Hall. They have relaxed under an simulated sun, glided down amusement rides, and seen AI-powered jellyfish floating through the air. Yet this marks the first time they will be venturing themselves in the detailed nasal passages of a reindeer. The current artist commission for this cavernous space—developed by Native Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—encourages patrons into a winding structure based on the expanded interior of a reindeer's nasal cavities. Once inside, they can meander around or unwind on pelts, listening on headphones to community leaders telling tales and knowledge.

The Significance of the Nose

Why choose the nasal structure? It might appear playful, but the exhibit celebrates a rarely recognized biological feat: experts have found that in a fraction of a second, the reindeer's nose can heat the ambient air it takes in by eighty degrees, allowing the creature to endure in extreme Arctic conditions. Enlarging the nose to human-scale dimensions, Sara says, "generates a perception of insignificance that you as a human being are not dominant over nature." The artist is a former writer, children's author, and rights advocate, who hails from a reindeer-herding family in the Norwegian Arctic. "Maybe that fosters the potential to shift your viewpoint or evoke some modesty," she adds.

An Homage to Traditional Ways

The labyrinthine structure is one of several elements in Sara's engaging exhibition honoring the culture, understanding, and worldview of the Sámi, the sole native group in Europe. Semi-nomadic, the Sámi number roughly 100,000 people ranged across northern Norway, the Finnish Arctic, the Swedish Lapland, and the Kola region (an region they call Sápmi). They have experienced discrimination, integration policies, and repression of their language by all four states. By focusing on the reindeer, an animal at the core of the Sámi cosmology and creation story, the work also draws attention to the community's struggles associated with the environmental emergency, land dispossession, and imperialism.

Symbolism in Materials

Along the lengthy entrance incline, there's a soaring, eighty-five-foot structure of pelts entangled by power and light cables. It can be read as a metaphor for the political and economic systems constraining the Sámi. Like an electrical tower, part spiritual ascent, this section of the installation, named Goavve-, relates to the Sámi word for an severe climatic event, wherein dense layers of ice develop as fluctuating temperatures thaw and solidify again the snow, encasing the reindeers' key winter sustenance, lichen. The condition is a consequence of climate change, which is happening up to at an accelerated rate in the Polar region than in other regions.

Three years ago, I met with Sara in the Norwegian far north during a goavvi winter and went with Sámi herders on their Arctic vehicles in biting cold as they carried trailers of supplementary feed on to the barren frozen landscape to dispense by hand. The reindeer surrounded round us, digging the frozen ground in vain for mossy bits. This expensive and demanding procedure is having a drastic effect on reindeer husbandry—and on the animals' independence. However the choice is death. As goavvi winters become commonplace, reindeer are perishing—a number from lack of food, others drowning after sinking in streams through unstable frozen surfaces. In a sense, the work is a monument to them. "Through the stacking of elements, in a way I'm introducing the goavvi to London," says Sara.

Opposing Worldviews

This artwork also underscores the sharp divergence between the western interpretation of electricity as a asset to be exploited for economic benefit and existence and the Sámi philosophy of vitality as an innate life force in creatures, humans, and nature. Tate Modern's history as a coal and oil power station is connected to this, as is what the Sámi consider eco-imperialism by Nordic countries. While attempting to be standard bearers for clean sources, these states have locked horns with the Sámi over the development of windfarms, river barriers, and mines on their native soil; the Sámi contend their fundamental freedoms, ways of life, and way of life are endangered. "It's very difficult being such a tiny group to stand your ground when the justifications are based on global sustainability," Sara observes. "Mining practices has co-opted the language of sustainability, but still it's just striving to find alternative ways to continue habits of consumption."

Individual Conflicts

Sara and her kin have themselves conflicted with the Norwegian government over its ever-stricter policies on animal husbandry. Previously, Sara's sibling embarked on a series of ultimately unsuccessful lawsuits over the required reduction of his herd, supposedly to stop vegetation depletion. As a show of solidarity, Sara produced a extended series of pieces named Pile O'Sápmi comprising a colossal screen of four hundred animal bones, which was displayed at the the art exhibition Documenta 14 and later obtained by the National Museum of Oslo, where it hangs in the lobby.

Art as Activism

For many Sámi, art appears the only domain in which they can be listened to by outsiders. In 2022, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|