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Guests to the renowned gallery are accustomed to unusual displays in its vast Turbine Hall. They have basked under an man-made sun, slid down amusement rides, and seen robotic jellyfish floating through the air. However this marks the inaugural time they will be engaging themselves in the detailed nose cavities of a reindeer. The newest artistic project for this cavernous space—designed by Indigenous Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—invites visitors into a maze-like design inspired by the enlarged interior of a reindeer's nasal passages. Once inside, they can wander around or chill out on pelts, tuning in on headphones to community leaders telling tales and knowledge.

The Significance of the Nose

Why choose the nasal structure? It could seem playful, but the artwork pays tribute to a little-known natural marvel: researchers have uncovered that in a fraction of a second, the reindeer's nose can heat the ambient air it breathes in by 80 degrees celsius, enabling the animal to endure in harsh Arctic temperatures. Enlarging the nose to larger than human size, Sara explains, "generates a feeling of inferiority that you as a individual are not superior over nature." The artist is a former writer, writer for kids, and land defender, who hails from a pastoral family in the Norwegian Arctic. "Possibly that fosters the chance to alter your viewpoint or trigger some modesty," she continues.

An Homage to Sámi Culture

The winding design is part of a features in Sara's immersive art project celebrating the culture, understanding, and worldview of the Sámi, Europe's only Indigenous people. Semi-nomadic, the Sámi number approximately 100,000 people spread across the Norwegian north, Finland, the Swedish Lapland, and the Kola region (an area they call Sápmi). They have endured persecution, cultural suppression, and eradication of their dialect by all four nations. By focusing on the reindeer, an creature at the center of the Sámi mythology and founding narrative, the work also draws attention to the group's issues connected to the environmental emergency, property rights, and external control.

Metaphor in Elements

At the lengthy entrance slope, there's a soaring, 26-metre formation of pelts trapped by utility lines. It serves as a analogy for the governance and financial structures limiting the Sámi. Part pylon, part heavenly staircase, this part of the installation, called Goavve-, refers to the Sámi term for an extreme weather phenomenon, whereby solid sheets of ice appear as fluctuating weather thaw and solidify again the snow, encasing the reindeers' primary winter nourishment, moss. This phenomenon is a result of planetary warming, which is occurring up to much more rapidly in the Arctic than in other regions.

Previously, I traveled to see Sara in a remote town during a icy season and went with Sámi reindeer keepers on their motorized sleds in chilly conditions as they hauled trailers of food pellets on to the exposed frozen landscape to distribute by hand. The reindeer crowded round us, scratching the slippery ground in futility for mossy morsels. This expensive and laborious method is having a severe effect on herding practices—and on the animals' self-sufficiency. Yet the choice is malnutrition. As goavvi winters become commonplace, reindeer are dying—a number from starvation, others suffocating after plunging into water bodies through prematurely melting ice. On one level, the art is a monument to them. "With the layering of elements, in a way I'm transporting the goavvi to London," says Sara.

Contrasting Belief Systems

This artwork also underscores the sharp difference between the industrial understanding of power as a asset to be utilized for gain and existence and the Sámi outlook of energy as an inherent power in creatures, people, and nature. Tate Modern's history as a fossil fuel plant is tied up in this, as is what the Sámi view as green colonialism by regional governments. As they strive to be standard bearers for clean sources, Scandinavian countries have disagreed with the Sámi over the development of windfarms, hydroelectric dams, and mines on their traditional territory; the Sámi argue their legal protections, ways of life, and way of life are threatened. "It's challenging being such a tiny group to defend yourself when the arguments are based on global sustainability," Sara notes. "Resource exploitation has co-opted the rhetoric of sustainability, but yet it's just aiming to find better ways to continue patterns of consumption."

Family Struggles

The artist and her kin have personally conflicted with the state authorities over its increasingly stringent policies on herding. Previously, Sara's sibling undertook a series of finally failed legal cases over the mandatory slaughter of his livestock, supposedly to stop vegetation depletion. In support, Sara produced a multi-year collection of pieces called Pile O'Sápmi including a colossal screen of four hundred cranial remains, which was shown at the the show Documenta 14 and later acquired by the National Museum of Oslo, where it resides in the lobby.

The Role of Art in Awareness

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