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Guests to the renowned gallery are accustomed to surprising displays in its spacious Turbine Hall. They've relaxed under an artificial sun, slid down amusement rides, and seen robotic jellyfish drifting through the air. Yet this marks the initial time they will be venturing themselves in the detailed nasal passages of a reindeer. The latest artistic project for this immense space—designed by Indigenous Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—encourages visitors into a winding design inspired by the enlarged inside of a reindeer's nasal airways. Upon entering, they can stroll around or unwind on reindeer hides, listening on earphones to tribal seniors imparting narratives and knowledge.

The Significance of the Nose

Why the nose? It could sound quirky, but the installation pays tribute to a rarely recognized scientific wonder: experts have found that in under a second, the reindeer's nose can raise the temperature of the incoming air it takes in by 80°C, allowing the creature to endure in extreme Arctic conditions. Scaling the nose to human-scale dimensions, Sara notes, "creates a feeling of smallness that you as a human being are not dominant over nature." Sara is a former writer, writer for kids, and land defender, who comes from a herding family in the Norwegian Arctic. "Perhaps that generates the chance to alter your viewpoint or trigger some modesty," she continues.

A Tribute to Indigenous Heritage

The maze-like structure is one of several components in Sara's immersive exhibition celebrating the heritage, science, and beliefs of the Sámi, Europe's only Indigenous people. Traditionally mobile, the Sámi total about 100,000 people distributed across the Norwegian north, the Finnish Arctic, the Swedish Lapland, and Russia's Kola Peninsula (an territory they call Sápmi). They've endured discrimination, forced assimilation, and suppression of their language by all four states. By focusing on the reindeer, an animal at the core of the Sámi cosmology and origin tale, the installation also highlights the people's struggles relating to the global warming, land dispossession, and imperialism.

Meaning in Components

At the long entrance incline, there's a towering, eighty-five-foot formation of pelts ensnared by power and light cables. It serves as a symbol for the governance and financial structures limiting the Sámi. Partly a utility pole, part spiritual ascent, this section of the artwork, named Goavve-, points to the Sámi term for an severe climatic event, whereby solid layers of ice form as varying weather melt and solidify again the snow, locking in the reindeers' main winter nourishment, fungus. The condition is a consequence of planetary warming, which is happening up to at an accelerated rate in the Arctic than globally.

Three years ago, I met with Sara in a remote town during a goavvi winter and went with Sámi pastoralists on their snowmobiles in biting cold as they hauled containers of food pellets on to the exposed tundra to distribute through labor. The herd gathered round us, scratching the frozen ground in vain for vegetative morsels. This resource-intensive and laborious method is having a significant impact on animal rearing—and on the animals' self-sufficiency. But the choice is starvation. As goavvi winters become commonplace, reindeer are perishing—a number from hunger, others suffocating after falling into water bodies through thinning ice sheets. To some extent, the art is a memorial to them. "By overlapping of components, in a way I'm introducing the condition to London," says Sara.

Contrasting Belief Systems

The sculpture also underscores the stark divergence between the modern interpretation of electricity as a resource to be harnessed for gain and livelihood and the Sámi outlook of life force as an inherent essence in animals, humans, and nature. Tate Modern's past as a industrial facility is connected to this, as is what the Sámi view as eco-imperialism by Scandinavian states. In their efforts to be leaders for sustainable power, Scandinavian countries have locked horns with the Sámi over the building of wind energy projects, hydroelectric dams, and digging operations on their native soil; the Sámi argue their legal protections, ways of life, and way of life are endangered. "It's hard being such a small minority to stand your ground when the reasons are rooted in saving the world," Sara notes. "Extractivism has adopted the language of environmentalism, but still it's just attempting to find more suitable ways to continue practices of consumption."

Individual Challenges

Sara and her kin have themselves disagreed with the national administration over its ever-stricter regulations on animal husbandry. A few years ago, Sara's sibling initiated a series of finally failed lawsuits over the required reduction of his livestock, supposedly to stop excessive feeding. In support, Sara produced a extended set of creations titled Pile O'Sápmi comprising a colossal drape of four hundred reindeer skulls, which was shown at the 2017 show Documenta 14 and later obtained by the National Museum of Oslo, where it resides in the entrance.

Creative Expression as Awareness

For numerous Indigenous people, visual expression appears the exclusive domain in which they can be heard by people of other nations. In 2022, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|