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Attendees to the renowned gallery are accustomed to unexpected encounters in its spacious Turbine Hall. They've basked under an artificial sun, glided down helter skelters, and seen robotic jellyfish floating through the air. But this marks the inaugural time they will be engaging themselves in the intricate nasal passages of a reindeer. The current creative installation for this cavernous space—developed by Indigenous Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—welcomes gallerygoers into a labyrinthine construction based on the scaled-up inside of a reindeer's nose passages. Once inside, they can wander around or chill out on reindeer hides, listening on earphones to community leaders imparting stories and knowledge.

The Significance of the Nose

What's the focus on the nose? It might seem quirky, but the exhibit honors a obscure natural marvel: researchers have found that in less than one second, the reindeer's nose can warm the ambient air it takes in by 80 degrees celsius, enabling the creature to survive in harsh Arctic climates. Expanding the nose to larger than human size, Sara notes, "generates a feeling of insignificance that you as a human being are not in control over nature." Sara is a former writer, children's author, and environmental activist, who hails from a pastoral family in northern Norway. "Maybe that generates the potential to shift your perspective or trigger some humbleness," she states.

A Celebration to Sámi Culture

The maze-like installation is part of a components in Sara's absorbing commission honoring the traditions, knowledge, and worldview of the Sámi, the continent's original inhabitants. Traditionally mobile, the Sámi total approximately 100,000 people distributed across northern Norway, the Finnish Arctic, Sweden, and the Kola region (an area they call Sápmi). They've endured persecution, cultural suppression, and suppression of their language by all four nations. By focusing on the reindeer, an animal at the center of the Sámi mythology and creation story, the work also spotlights the people's challenges associated with the environmental emergency, property rights, and colonialism.

Symbolism in Elements

Along the extended entry incline, there's a towering, eighty-five-foot structure of skins entangled by electrical wires. It represents a metaphor for the societal frameworks restricting the Sámi. Part pylon, part celestial ladder, this component of the artwork, named Goavve-, refers to the Sámi term for an harsh environmental condition, in which solid sheets of ice develop as changing temperatures thaw and solidify again the snow, trapping the reindeers' key winter sustenance, moss. Goavvi is a consequence of climate change, which is occurring up to at an accelerated rate in the Arctic than elsewhere.

A few years back, I visited Sara in the Norwegian far north during a icy season and accompanied Sámi pastoralists on their Arctic vehicles in chilly conditions as they carried carts of supplementary feed on to the exposed Arctic plains to dispense manually. These animals gathered round us, pawing the icy ground in vain attempts for mossy morsels. This resource-intensive and demanding procedure is having a drastic influence on reindeer husbandry—and on the animals' natural survival. Yet the choice is death. When such conditions become commonplace, reindeer are perishing—some from lack of food, others drowning after sinking in lakes and rivers through prematurely melting ice. In a sense, the work is a monument to them. "With the layering of components, in a way I'm bringing the phenomenon to London," says Sara.

Opposing Worldviews

The installation also emphasizes the sharp divergence between the modern view of power as a resource to be exploited for profit and existence and the Sámi worldview of vitality as an innate life force in animals, humans, and the environment. Tate Modern's past as a coal and oil power station is linked with this, as is what the Sámi see as eco-imperialism by regional governments. While attempting to be exemplars for clean sources, Nordic nations have locked horns with the Sámi over the construction of wind energy projects, hydroelectric dams, and mines on their native soil; the Sámi contend their legal protections, ways of life, and way of life are endangered. "It's very difficult being such a small minority to protect your rights when the justifications are based on saving the world," Sara comments. "Extractivism has adopted the language of sustainability, but nonetheless it's just aiming to find more suitable ways to maintain practices of consumption."

Individual Struggles

She and her kin have themselves clashed with the Norwegian government over its tightening regulations on animal husbandry. In 2016, Sara's brother embarked on a sequence of finally failed court actions over the required reduction of his herd, ostensibly to stop excessive feeding. In support, Sara developed a extended collection of pieces titled Pile O'Sápmi featuring a colossal drape of 400 cranial remains, which was displayed at the the show Documenta 14 and later acquired by the public gallery, where it hangs in the lobby.

Creative Expression as Advocacy

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