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Visitors to the renowned gallery are used to surprising experiences in its expansive Turbine Hall. They've relaxed under an artificial sun, glided down amusement rides, and observed AI-powered sea creatures hovering through the air. Yet this marks the inaugural time they will be engaging themselves in the detailed nose cavities of a reindeer. The latest artist commission for this huge space—designed by Native Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—encourages visitors into a winding structure inspired by the enlarged interior of a reindeer's nose airways. Once inside, they can meander around or relax on skins, tuning in on earphones to community leaders telling tales and knowledge.

Why the Nose?

Why choose the nasal structure? It may sound whimsical, but the artwork pays tribute to a rarely recognized natural marvel: researchers have found that in a fraction of a second, the reindeer's nose can warm the ambient air it takes in by 80°C, helping the animal to survive in inhospitable Arctic climates. Expanding the nose to human-scale dimensions, Sara says, "creates a perception of inferiority that you as a person are not superior over nature." The artist is a ex- writer, children's author, and land defender, who is from a pastoral family in northern Norway. "Maybe that creates the chance to shift your perspective or trigger some humbleness," she states.

An Homage to Traditional Ways

The maze-like design is one of several components in Sara's engaging art project celebrating the heritage, knowledge, and philosophy of the Sámi, Europe's only Indigenous people. Semi-nomadic, the Sámi total about 100,000 people spread across northern Norway, the Finnish Arctic, Sweden, and Russia's Kola Peninsula (an region they call Sápmi). They've endured discrimination, forced assimilation, and repression of their language by all four nations. Through highlighting the reindeer, an animal at the core of the Sámi cosmology and founding narrative, the installation also highlights the people's challenges relating to the climate crisis, loss of territory, and external control.

Symbolism in Materials

On the long access slope, there's a soaring, 26-meter structure of pelts trapped by power and light cables. It can be read as a metaphor for the societal frameworks restricting the Sámi. Part pylon, part celestial ladder, this component of the installation, named Goavve-, points to the Sámi name for an harsh environmental condition, wherein dense coatings of ice develop as fluctuating conditions melt and solidify again the snow, trapping the reindeers' main winter nourishment, fungus. This phenomenon is a outcome of climate change, which is occurring up to four times faster in the Far North than globally.

Previously, I visited Sara in Guovdageaidnu during a icy season and joined Sámi reindeer keepers on their motorized sleds in biting cold as they hauled carts of supplementary feed on to the exposed tundra to dispense manually. The herd gathered round us, pawing the slippery ground in futility for lichen-covered pieces. This costly and demanding procedure is having a severe impact on reindeer husbandry—and on the animals' natural survival. Yet the other option is malnutrition. As goavvi winters become commonplace, reindeer are dying—some from lack of food, others submerging after sinking in streams through thinning ice sheets. On one level, the installation is a memorial to them. "With the layering of materials, in a way I'm bringing the goavvi to London," says Sara.

Diverging Worldviews

The sculpture also highlights the sharp divergence between the western understanding of energy as a resource to be exploited for profit and existence and the Sámi outlook of life force as an natural essence in creatures, humans, and the environment. Tate Modern's legacy as a coal and oil power station is connected to this, as is what the Sámi view as eco-imperialism by Scandinavian states. As they strive to be standard bearers for renewable energy, these states have locked horns with the Sámi over the development of wind energy projects, hydroelectric dams, and digging operations on their traditional territory; the Sámi assert their human rights, livelihoods, and way of life are endangered. "It's challenging being such a limited population to stand your ground when the reasons are rooted in global sustainability," Sara comments. "Extractivism has adopted the discourse of environmentalism, but still it's just attempting to find alternative ways to persist in habits of expenditure."

Individual Conflicts

Sara and her kin have personally disagreed with the state authorities over its increasingly stringent rules on reindeer management. Previously, Sara's sibling initiated a set of unsuccessful lawsuits over the mandatory slaughter of his animals, apparently to stop excessive feeding. In support, Sara produced a extended series of pieces named Pile O'Sápmi comprising a colossal drape of four hundred animal bones, which was shown at the 2017 show Documenta 14 and later purchased by the National Museum of Oslo, where it is displayed in the entrance.

Creative Expression as Advocacy

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