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Attendees to the renowned gallery are used to unusual displays in its expansive Turbine Hall. They've sunbathed under an simulated sun, descended down spiral slides, and observed robotic jellyfish drifting through the air. Yet this marks the inaugural time they will be venturing themselves in the complex nasal cavities of a reindeer. The latest artistic project for this huge space—designed by Indigenous Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—welcomes visitors into a winding construction based on the expanded interior of a reindeer's nose cavities. Once inside, they can wander around or chill out on skins, tuning in on earphones to tribal seniors sharing stories and insights.

The Significance of the Nose

Why choose the nasal structure? It could sound whimsical, but the exhibit pays tribute to a obscure scientific wonder: experts have found that in a fraction of a second, the reindeer's nose can raise the temperature of the surrounding air it takes in by 80 degrees celsius, helping the creature to thrive in harsh Arctic climates. Expanding the nose to human-scale dimensions, Sara notes, "creates a feeling of inferiority that you as a human being are not in control over nature." Sara is a former writer, young adult author, and environmental activist, who is from a herding family in the Norwegian Arctic. "Possibly that generates the chance to shift your perspective or spark some humility," she states.

A Celebration to Sámi Culture

The winding design is part of a elements in Sara's engaging commission celebrating the culture, knowledge, and philosophy of the Sámi, the continent's original inhabitants. Traditionally mobile, the Sámi total approximately 100,000 people distributed across the Norwegian north, Finland, the Swedish Lapland, and Russia's Kola Peninsula (an region they call Sápmi). They've faced oppression, forced assimilation, and suppression of their dialect by all four states. Through highlighting the reindeer, an animal at the center of the Sámi cosmology and creation story, the art also highlights the group's challenges connected to the climate crisis, land dispossession, and colonialism.

Metaphor in Materials

Along the long entrance ramp, there's a soaring, 26-meter sculpture of skins trapped by power and light cables. It serves as a metaphor for the governance and financial structures limiting the Sámi. Partly a utility pole, part heavenly staircase, this section of the artwork, called Goavve-, refers to the Sámi term for an harsh environmental condition, wherein dense layers of ice develop as fluctuating temperatures melt and refreeze the snow, encasing the reindeers' main cold-season food, moss. Goavvi is a result of climate change, which is taking place up to four times faster in the Arctic than in other regions.

Three years ago, I traveled to see Sara in the Norwegian far north during a goavvi winter and went with Sámi pastoralists on their motorized sleds in biting cold as they transported carts of animal nutrition on to the exposed Arctic plains to distribute manually. These animals gathered round us, scratching the icy ground in vain for vegetative bits. This expensive and laborious procedure is having a significant effect on animal rearing—and on the animals' natural survival. But the alternative is malnutrition. As these icy periods become commonplace, reindeer are succumbing—some from lack of food, others suffocating after falling into lakes and rivers through prematurely melting ice. In a sense, the art is a memorial to them. "Through the stacking of elements, in a way I'm introducing the condition to London," says Sara.

Opposing Worldviews

The sculpture also highlights the clear contrast between the western understanding of electricity as a asset to be utilized for economic benefit and existence and the Sámi outlook of life force as an inherent power in animals, people, 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 Scandinavian states. As they strive to be standard bearers for clean sources, these states have disagreed with the Sámi over the building of wind energy projects, river barriers, and digging operations on their traditional territory; the Sámi argue their human rights, livelihoods, and traditions are threatened. "It's hard being such a small minority to protect your rights when the reasons are based on saving the world," Sara comments. "Resource exploitation has appropriated the rhetoric of environmentalism, but still it's just attempting to find better ways to maintain patterns of use."

Family Conflicts

Sara and her relatives have personally conflicted with the Norwegian government over its ever-stricter rules on animal husbandry. Previously, Sara's sibling undertook a sequence of unsuccessful lawsuits over the forced culling of his animals, apparently to stop excessive feeding. As a show of solidarity, Sara produced a four-year collection of pieces called Pile O'Sápmi including a massive curtain of 400 reindeer skulls, which was displayed at the the event Documenta 14 and later obtained by the national institution, where it hangs in the entrance.

Creative Expression as Advocacy

Among the community, art is the only realm in which they can be listened to by outsiders. In 2022, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|