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Guests to the renowned gallery are used to unusual displays in its spacious Turbine Hall. They have relaxed under an simulated sun, descended down helter skelters, and seen AI-powered jellyfish drifting through the air. But this marks the inaugural time they will be immersing themselves in the detailed nasal passages of a reindeer. The newest creative installation for this immense space—created by Indigenous Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—encourages visitors into a maze-like structure based on the expanded interior of a reindeer's nose airways. Upon entering, they can wander around or chill out on pelts, tuning in on headphones to community leaders telling narratives and knowledge.

Why the Nose?

What's the focus on the nose? It could sound playful, but the installation celebrates a rarely recognized biological feat: researchers have uncovered that in less than one second, the reindeer's nose can heat the surrounding air it takes in by 80°C, helping the creature to survive in extreme Arctic climates. Scaling the nose to human-scale dimensions, Sara says, "generates a perception of smallness that you as a human being are not in control over nature." She is a former reporter, young adult author, and environmental activist, who hails from a pastoral family in the far north of Norway. "Perhaps that creates the potential to alter your outlook or evoke some humbleness," she continues.

A Celebration to Traditional Ways

The maze-like design is among various components in Sara's engaging commission showcasing the heritage, science, and beliefs of the Sámi, the sole native group in Europe. Semi-nomadic, the Sámi total about 100,000 people spread across the Norwegian north, the Finnish Arctic, Sweden, and the Russian Arctic (an area they call Sápmi). They have faced oppression, forced assimilation, and eradication of their tongue by all four nations. Through highlighting the reindeer, an creature at the core of the Sámi belief system and creation story, the installation also highlights the group's challenges associated with the climate crisis, land dispossession, and imperialism.

Symbolism in Components

Along the long entry slope, there's a towering, eighty-five-foot sculpture of reindeer hides ensnared by utility lines. It serves as a analogy for the societal frameworks limiting the Sámi. Like an electrical tower, part spiritual ascent, this component of the installation, titled Goavve-, points to the Sámi word for an severe climatic event, whereby dense coatings of ice form as fluctuating weather melt and refreeze the snow, locking in the reindeers' primary cold-season sustenance, fungus. Goavvi is a result of global heating, which is happening up to much more rapidly in the Polar region than in other regions.

Three years ago, I visited Sara in Guovdageaidnu during a severe cold period and went with Sámi reindeer keepers on their snowmobiles in chilly conditions as they transported trailers of food pellets on to the wind-scoured Arctic plains to provide by hand. The herd gathered round us, scratching the slippery ground in vain for lichen-covered morsels. This resource-intensive and laborious procedure is having a severe effect on reindeer husbandry—and on the animals' independence. But the alternative is death. As these icy periods become commonplace, reindeer are succumbing—a number from lack of food, others submerging after falling into lakes and rivers through thinning ice sheets. In a sense, the art is a tribute to them. "With the layering of elements, in a way I'm bringing the phenomenon to London," says Sara.

Opposing Worldviews

The installation also emphasizes the clear contrast between the industrial understanding of energy as a commodity to be exploited for profit and survival and the Sámi philosophy of vitality as an inherent life force in animals, individuals, and the environment. Tate Modern's history as a fossil fuel plant is connected to this, as is what the Sámi see as environmental exploitation by Scandinavian states. In their efforts to be leaders for clean sources, Nordic nations have disagreed with the Sámi over the construction of windfarms, water power facilities, and mines on their ancestral land; the Sámi contend their fundamental freedoms, ways of life, and culture are at risk. "It's challenging being such a tiny group to defend yourself when the arguments are grounded in global sustainability," Sara comments. "Mining practices has adopted the rhetoric of environmentalism, but yet it's just striving to find more suitable ways to persist in practices of use."

Family Challenges

She and her family have personally clashed with the Norwegian government over its ever-stricter rules on herding. In 2016, Sara's brother initiated a set of finally failed court actions over the required reduction of his animals, apparently to stop overgrazing. As a show of solidarity, Sara produced a four-year set of artworks named Pile O'Sápmi comprising a huge screen of numerous animal bones, which was displayed at the 2017 art exhibition Documenta 14 and later obtained by the national institution, where it is displayed in the entrance.

The Role of Art in Advocacy

Among the community, creative work seems the only domain in which they can be understood by outsiders. In 2022, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|