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Visitors to the renowned gallery are familiar to unusual displays in its spacious Turbine Hall. They've relaxed under an simulated sun, glided down spiral slides, and seen automated sea creatures drifting through the air. However this marks the inaugural time they will be venturing themselves in the complex nose cavities of a reindeer. The current artistic project for this huge space—designed by Indigenous Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—invites visitors into a maze-like construction modeled after the scaled-up inside of a reindeer's nose airways. Upon entering, they can stroll around or chill out on reindeer hides, listening on earphones to community leaders imparting narratives and insights.

Why the Nose?

Why choose the nasal structure? It could sound whimsical, but the exhibit honors a obscure biological feat: researchers have uncovered that in under a second, the reindeer's nose can warm the ambient air it takes in by 80°C, allowing the animal to thrive in extreme Arctic conditions. Enlarging the nose to bigger than a person, Sara explains, "produces a feeling of insignificance that you as a human being are not in control over nature." The artist is a former reporter, writer for kids, and rights advocate, who comes from a pastoral family in the Norwegian Arctic. "Perhaps that fosters the potential to shift your outlook or trigger some humility," she states.

A Tribute to Traditional Ways

The maze-like structure is among various elements in Sara's engaging exhibition showcasing the heritage, knowledge, and beliefs of the Sámi, Europe's only Indigenous people. Traditionally mobile, the Sámi number about 100,000 people distributed across the Norwegian north, the Finnish Arctic, the Swedish Lapland, and the Russian Arctic (an region they call Sápmi). They've experienced oppression, cultural suppression, and repression of their tongue by all four states. By focusing on the reindeer, an creature at the center of the Sámi cosmology and founding narrative, the installation also draws attention to the people's challenges connected to the environmental emergency, land dispossession, and external control.

Symbolism in Elements

Along the extended entry slope, there's a looming, eighty-five-foot sculpture of reindeer hides trapped by utility lines. It represents a metaphor for the political and economic systems restricting the Sámi. Partly a utility pole, part celestial ladder, this section of the artwork, called Goavve-, relates to the Sámi name for an severe climatic event, whereby dense sheets of ice develop as changing temperatures liquefy and ice over the snow, trapping the reindeers' key winter nourishment, fungus. The condition is a result of planetary warming, which is taking place up to at an accelerated rate in the Arctic than in other regions.

Three years ago, I met with Sara in the Norwegian far north during a goavvi winter and accompanied Sámi herders on their motorized sleds in chilly conditions as they carried carts of supplementary feed on to the exposed tundra to provide by hand. The reindeer crowded round us, digging the frozen ground in futility for vegetative bits. This costly and demanding process is having a severe impact on herding practices—and on the animals' natural survival. Yet the other option is death. When such conditions become routine, reindeer are perishing—some from hunger, others drowning after falling into streams through unstable frozen surfaces. To some extent, the installation is a tribute to them. "By overlapping of elements, in a way I'm bringing the phenomenon to London," says Sara.

Diverging Perspectives

This artwork also emphasizes the clear contrast between the industrial understanding of electricity as a resource to be harnessed for gain and livelihood and the Sámi outlook of vitality as an natural essence in animals, people, and land. Tate Modern's past as a industrial facility is connected to this, as is what the Sámi see as green colonialism by Nordic countries. While attempting to be standard bearers for sustainable power, Scandinavian countries have locked horns with the Sámi over the building of wind energy projects, river barriers, and digging operations on their native soil; the Sámi contend their fundamental freedoms, incomes, and culture are at risk. "It's very difficult being such a small minority to defend yourself when the justifications are based on environmental protection," Sara comments. "Mining practices has adopted the discourse of sustainability, but still it's just aiming to find more suitable ways to maintain practices of expenditure."

Family Struggles

Sara and her relatives have personally conflicted with the Norwegian government over its increasingly stringent regulations on animal husbandry. Previously, Sara's brother embarked on a set of unsuccessful lawsuits over the forced culling of his livestock, ostensibly to stop overgrazing. In support, Sara produced a extended collection of pieces called Pile O'Sápmi comprising a huge drape of 400 reindeer skulls, which was shown at the 2017 art exhibition Documenta 14 and later purchased by the public gallery, where it resides in the entrance.

Creative Expression as Activism

For many Sámi, creative work seems the exclusive domain in which they can be listened to by outsiders. Recently, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|