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Visitors to the renowned gallery are accustomed to unexpected experiences in its spacious Turbine Hall. They've relaxed under an artificial sun, glided down amusement rides, and seen robotic sea creatures drifting through the air. Yet this marks the initial time they will be engaging themselves in the complex nasal cavities of a reindeer. The current artistic project for this huge space—developed by Native Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—invites gallerygoers into a winding structure inspired by the expanded inside of a reindeer's nose airways. Inside, they can meander around or chill out on skins, tuning in on headphones to Sámi elders imparting narratives and knowledge.

The Significance of the Nose

Why the nose? It may sound quirky, but the artwork pays tribute to a rarely recognized natural marvel: scientists have uncovered that in a fraction of a second, the reindeer's nose can warm the surrounding air it takes in by eighty degrees, allowing the animal to thrive in harsh Arctic climates. Expanding the nose to larger than human size, Sara says, "generates a perception of inferiority that you as a individual are not superior over nature." She is a former journalist, writer for kids, and rights advocate, who is from a reindeer-herding family in the far north of Norway. "Perhaps that fosters the potential to alter your perspective or evoke some modesty," she continues.

A Tribute to Indigenous Heritage

The labyrinthine structure is among various components in Sara's absorbing art project honoring the heritage, understanding, and beliefs of the Sámi, the continent's original inhabitants. Partially migratory, the Sámi total approximately 100,000 people spread across the Norwegian north, the Finnish Arctic, the Swedish Lapland, and Russia's Kola Peninsula (an territory they call Sápmi). They've experienced persecution, forced assimilation, and repression of their tongue by all four nations. With an emphasis on the reindeer, an animal at the core of the Sámi mythology and founding narrative, the art also spotlights the people's issues associated with the global warming, land dispossession, and colonialism.

Metaphor in Elements

Along the long entrance slope, there's a looming, 26-meter structure of reindeer hides trapped by utility lines. It represents a symbol for the political and economic systems limiting the Sámi. Partly a utility pole, part heavenly staircase, this part of the installation, titled Goavve-, refers to the Sámi word for an extreme weather phenomenon, in which solid sheets of ice appear as fluctuating conditions thaw and refreeze the snow, encasing the reindeers' primary winter sustenance, lichen. This phenomenon is a consequence of climate change, which is taking place up to four times faster in the Far North than elsewhere.

A few years back, I visited Sara in a remote town during a goavvi winter and joined Sámi reindeer keepers on their Arctic vehicles in freezing temperatures as they transported trailers of food pellets on to the exposed Arctic plains to dispense through labor. These animals surrounded round us, scratching the frozen ground in vain attempts for lichen-covered pieces. This resource-intensive and laborious procedure is having a significant effect on animal rearing—and on the animals' natural survival. Yet the other option is starvation. As goavvi winters become commonplace, reindeer are perishing—a number from hunger, others drowning after plunging into lakes and rivers through thinning ice sheets. On one level, the art is a memorial to them. "By overlapping of materials, in a way I'm transporting the condition to London," says Sara.

Contrasting Worldviews

This artwork also underscores the sharp difference between the industrial view of energy as a commodity to be utilized for profit and survival and the Sámi philosophy of vitality as an inherent essence in creatures, individuals, and the environment. Tate Modern's past as a industrial facility is tied up in this, as is what the Sámi view as environmental exploitation by regional governments. As they strive to be standard bearers for renewable energy, these states have locked horns with the Sámi over the construction of windfarms, river barriers, and mines on their ancestral land; the Sámi assert their human rights, ways of life, and traditions are endangered. "It's challenging being such a limited population to stand your ground when the arguments are rooted in environmental protection," Sara comments. "Extractivism has co-opted the discourse of environmentalism, but still it's just attempting to find better ways to maintain practices of expenditure."

Family Conflicts

She and her family have personally conflicted with the national administration over its ever-stricter rules on animal husbandry. A few years ago, Sara's brother initiated a set of finally failed court actions over the mandatory slaughter of his herd, apparently to stop vegetation depletion. To back him, Sara developed a four-year series of pieces titled Pile O'Sápmi including a huge curtain of numerous reindeer skulls, which was shown at the 2017's event Documenta 14 and later acquired by the National Museum of Oslo, where it is displayed in the lobby.

The Role of Art in Awareness

For many Sámi, art is the sole realm in which they can be listened to by the global community. In 2022, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|