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Visitors to the renowned gallery are accustomed to unusual encounters in its expansive Turbine Hall. They've sunbathed under an artificial sun, slid down spiral slides, and seen robotic jellyfish hovering through the air. But this marks the first time they will be engaging themselves in the complex nasal chambers of a reindeer. The newest artist commission for this cavernous space—created by Indigenous Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—welcomes visitors into a maze-like construction modeled after the scaled-up interior of a reindeer's nose passages. Upon entering, they can wander around or chill out on skins, tuning in on earphones to community leaders sharing narratives and knowledge.

The Significance of the Nose

Why choose the nasal structure? It could appear quirky, but the installation celebrates a little-known natural marvel: researchers have discovered that in a fraction of a second, the reindeer's nose can heat the incoming air it takes in by eighty degrees, allowing the animal to survive in inhospitable Arctic climates. Scaling the nose to larger than human size, Sara notes, "creates a sense of inferiority that you as a human being are not in control over nature." She is a former reporter, children's author, and land defender, who hails from a pastoral family in the Norwegian Arctic. "Perhaps that generates the potential to shift your viewpoint or spark some humbleness," she states.

A Tribute to Indigenous Heritage

The maze-like design is among various features in Sara's absorbing commission celebrating the traditions, knowledge, and philosophy of the Sámi, Europe's only Indigenous people. Traditionally mobile, the Sámi number approximately 100,000 people distributed across northern Norway, Finland, the Swedish Lapland, and the Russian Arctic (an territory they call Sápmi). They've experienced discrimination, integration policies, and eradication of their tongue by all four countries. With an emphasis on the reindeer, an animal at the center of the Sámi cosmology and founding narrative, the installation also spotlights the community's issues relating to the environmental emergency, property rights, and imperialism.

Symbolism in Materials

On the long entry ramp, there's a soaring, eighty-five-foot sculpture of pelts entangled by electrical wires. It serves as a metaphor for the societal frameworks limiting the Sámi. Partly a utility pole, part spiritual ascent, this part of the installation, named Goavve-, points to the Sámi word for an extreme weather phenomenon, wherein dense sheets of ice appear as varying weather thaw and refreeze the snow, trapping the reindeers' key winter sustenance, fungus. Goavvi is a result of planetary warming, which is happening up to four times faster in the Far North than in other regions.

Three years ago, I met with Sara in a remote town during a goavvi winter and went with Sámi pastoralists on their snowmobiles in freezing temperatures as they hauled trailers of animal nutrition on to the wind-scoured frozen landscape to distribute through labor. The herd surrounded round us, scratching the icy ground in futility for vegetative bits. This resource-intensive and demanding procedure is having a drastic effect on herding practices—and on the animals' self-sufficiency. But the alternative is starvation. As these icy periods become frequent, reindeer are dying—a number from starvation, others drowning after plunging into streams through thinning ice sheets. To some extent, the art is a memorial to them. "With the layering of elements, in a way I'm introducing the condition to London," says Sara.

Contrasting Worldviews

The sculpture also underscores the sharp contrast between the industrial view of electricity as a resource to be harnessed for profit and livelihood and the Sámi worldview of life force as an natural life force in creatures, humans, and the environment. Tate Modern's history as a fossil fuel plant is connected to this, as is what the Sámi see as green colonialism by Scandinavian states. As they strive to be leaders for sustainable power, Scandinavian countries have disagreed with the Sámi over the building of turbine fields, river barriers, and mines on their traditional territory; the Sámi argue their fundamental freedoms, livelihoods, and traditions are threatened. "It's hard being such a tiny group to defend yourself when the justifications are rooted in global sustainability," Sara observes. "Mining practices has co-opted the rhetoric of environmentalism, but yet it's just aiming to find more suitable ways to persist in habits of expenditure."

Individual Conflicts

She and her family have themselves disagreed with the state authorities over its ever-stricter regulations on animal husbandry. Previously, Sara's sibling embarked on a series of unsuccessful court actions over the mandatory slaughter of his animals, supposedly to stop overgrazing. In support, Sara created a multi-year set of artworks called Pile O'Sápmi comprising a massive curtain of numerous animal bones, which was shown at the 2017's art exhibition Documenta 14 and later obtained by the National Museum of Oslo, where it is displayed in the entryway.

Creative Expression as Awareness

Among the community, creative work is the sole realm in which they can be heard by outsiders. In 2022, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|