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Visitors to the renowned gallery are used to unexpected encounters in its vast Turbine Hall. They've basked under an simulated sun, descended down amusement rides, and observed automated jellyfish drifting through the air. Yet this marks the inaugural time they will be engaging themselves in the detailed nose passages of a reindeer. The newest artistic project for this cavernous space—developed by Native Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—encourages gallerygoers into a labyrinthine design modeled after the scaled-up inside of a reindeer's nose cavities. Upon entering, they can wander around or chill out on reindeer hides, tuning in on earphones to tribal seniors telling stories and knowledge.

Why the Nose?

What's the focus on the nose? It might sound playful, but the artwork pays tribute to a little-known natural marvel: scientists have discovered that in a fraction of a second, the reindeer's nose can heat the ambient air it inhales by eighty degrees, helping the creature to thrive in inhospitable Arctic temperatures. Enlarging the nose to larger than human size, Sara says, "creates a perception of smallness that you as a individual are not in control over nature." Sara is a former reporter, young adult author, and environmental activist, who comes from a herding family in the Norwegian Arctic. "Maybe that generates the chance to shift your perspective or spark some humility," she states.

A Tribute to Indigenous Heritage

The maze-like design is part of a features in Sara's immersive exhibition celebrating the culture, science, and worldview of the Sámi, the continent's original inhabitants. Partially migratory, the Sámi number approximately 100,000 people spread across northern Norway, the Finnish Arctic, the Swedish Lapland, and Russia's Kola Peninsula (an territory they call Sápmi). They've faced persecution, integration policies, and suppression of their language by all four nations. With an emphasis on the reindeer, an animal at the core of the Sámi cosmology and founding narrative, the work also highlights the people's struggles associated with the global warming, land dispossession, and imperialism.

Meaning in Materials

On the extended access ramp, there's a looming, eighty-five-foot sculpture of pelts trapped by utility lines. It can be read as a metaphor for the political and economic systems constraining the Sámi. Part pylon, part celestial ladder, this part of the artwork, named Goavve-, relates to the Sámi word for an harsh environmental condition, in which thick layers of ice develop as changing temperatures melt and refreeze the snow, encasing the reindeers' primary cold-season sustenance, moss. The condition is a consequence of global heating, which is happening up to much more rapidly in the Far North than globally.

A few years back, I met with Sara in Guovdageaidnu during a severe cold period and joined Sámi herders on their motorized sleds in freezing temperatures as they transported trailers of food pellets on to the exposed tundra to provide by hand. The herd gathered round us, digging the frozen ground in vain for lichen-covered pieces. This costly and demanding process is having a significant impact on herding practices—and on the animals' independence. But the choice is starvation. As these icy periods become frequent, reindeer are dying—a number from starvation, others suffocating after plunging into water bodies through prematurely melting ice. In a sense, the art is a tribute to them. "By overlapping of elements, in a way I'm bringing the phenomenon to London," says Sara.

Opposing Perspectives

The sculpture also underscores the clear difference between the western understanding of power as a resource to be exploited for profit and survival and the Sámi philosophy of energy as an natural life force in animals, individuals, and land. Tate Modern's legacy as a industrial facility is tied up in this, as is what the Sámi see as eco-imperialism by Nordic countries. In their efforts to be leaders for clean sources, these states have clashed with the Sámi over the construction of turbine fields, river barriers, and extraction sites on their native soil; the Sámi assert their human rights, ways of life, and culture are threatened. "It's very difficult being such a small minority to protect your rights when the justifications are based on global sustainability," Sara comments. "Extractivism has adopted the rhetoric of sustainability, but still it's just attempting to find more suitable ways to continue habits of expenditure."

Family Conflicts

She and her relatives have themselves conflicted with the Norwegian government over its increasingly stringent regulations on reindeer management. Previously, Sara's sibling initiated a series of finally failed court actions over the required reduction of his livestock, apparently to stop overgrazing. To back him, Sara developed a multi-year collection of artworks called Pile O'Sápmi featuring a colossal curtain of numerous animal bones, which was exhibited at the 2017 art exhibition Documenta 14 and later purchased by the national institution, where it hangs in the entryway.

The Role of Art in Awareness

For many Sámi, art seems the only domain in which they can be listened to by outsiders. In 2022, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|