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Visitors to the renowned gallery are accustomed to unusual experiences in its spacious Turbine Hall. They have relaxed under an man-made sun, descended down spiral slides, and observed automated jellyfish hovering through the air. But this marks the inaugural time they will be immersing themselves in the detailed nasal cavities of a reindeer. The latest creative installation for this huge space—developed by Indigenous Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—invites visitors into a labyrinthine structure inspired by the enlarged inside of a reindeer's nose airways. Once inside, they can wander around or chill out on skins, tuning in on headphones to Sámi elders imparting tales and knowledge.

Focus on the Nasal Passages

What's the focus on the nose? It may sound playful, but the exhibit honors a little-known biological feat: researchers have discovered that in a fraction of a second, the reindeer's nose can raise the temperature of the surrounding air it breathes in by 80°C, enabling the creature to endure in inhospitable Arctic climates. Expanding the nose to larger than human size, Sara notes, "generates a perception of insignificance that you as a individual are not dominant over nature." She is a former writer, children's author, and rights advocate, who hails from a pastoral family in the Norwegian Arctic. "Possibly that generates the potential to change your viewpoint or spark some modesty," she continues.

A Celebration to Traditional Ways

The maze-like installation is part of a features in Sara's immersive art project honoring the traditions, knowledge, and worldview of the Sámi, the continent's original inhabitants. Traditionally mobile, the Sámi count approximately 100,000 people ranged across the Norwegian north, the Finnish Arctic, Sweden, and the Kola region (an area they call Sápmi). They've endured oppression, forced assimilation, and repression of their tongue by all four countries. Through highlighting the reindeer, an creature at the center of the Sámi belief system and origin tale, the installation also spotlights the community's struggles connected to the climate crisis, land dispossession, and colonialism.

Metaphor in Elements

At the long entrance ramp, there's a towering, 26-meter sculpture of reindeer hides entangled by electrical wires. It represents a symbol for the political and economic systems constraining the Sámi. Part pylon, part spiritual ascent, this component of the exhibit, titled Goavve-, refers to the Sámi term for an harsh environmental condition, whereby thick sheets of ice develop as fluctuating weather liquefy and solidify again the snow, encasing the reindeers' key cold-season nourishment, moss. This phenomenon is a outcome of global heating, which is happening up to four times faster in the Polar region than globally.

Three years ago, I visited Sara in the Norwegian far north during a icy season and accompanied Sámi pastoralists on their Arctic vehicles in biting cold as they transported trailers of supplementary feed on to the barren frozen landscape to dispense through labor. These animals crowded round us, pawing the frozen ground in vain attempts for vegetative morsels. This expensive and demanding process is having a severe influence on reindeer husbandry—and on the animals' self-sufficiency. Yet the choice is death. As these icy periods become routine, reindeer are dying—some from starvation, others submerging after falling into lakes and rivers through thinning ice sheets. In a sense, the installation is a tribute to them. "Through the stacking of components, in a way I'm introducing the condition to London," says Sara.

Opposing Belief Systems

This artwork also emphasizes the sharp divergence between the industrial view of energy as a resource to be utilized for gain and existence and the Sámi outlook of energy as an natural power in animals, people, and land. Tate Modern's history as a coal and oil power station is tied up in this, as is what the Sámi see as environmental exploitation by Scandinavian states. As they strive to be standard bearers for renewable energy, these states have clashed with the Sámi over the building of windfarms, water power facilities, and digging operations on their ancestral land; the Sámi contend their legal protections, livelihoods, and culture are threatened. "It's challenging being such a limited population to defend yourself when the justifications are based on global sustainability," Sara observes. "Resource exploitation has adopted the discourse of ecology, but nonetheless it's just striving to find better ways to continue patterns of expenditure."

Family Challenges

The artist and her relatives have personally clashed with the national administration over its increasingly stringent regulations on animal husbandry. Previously, Sara's sibling initiated a sequence of unsuccessful court actions over the required reduction of his animals, ostensibly to stop vegetation depletion. In support, Sara created a multi-year set of artworks called Pile O'Sápmi comprising a colossal drape of numerous cranial remains, which was displayed at the the show Documenta 14 and later obtained by the public gallery, where it is displayed in the entryway.

The Role of Art in Awareness

Among the community, creative work seems the sole sphere in which they can be listened to by outsiders. In 2022, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|