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Guests to the renowned gallery are used to unusual displays in its spacious Turbine Hall. They've relaxed under an artificial sun, glided down spiral slides, and witnessed AI-powered jellyfish floating through the air. Yet this marks the inaugural time they will be engaging themselves in the detailed nasal passages of a reindeer. The newest creative installation for this huge space—created by Native Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—invites gallerygoers into a labyrinthine construction inspired by the scaled-up interior of a reindeer's nose passages. Inside, they can meander around or relax on reindeer hides, tuning in on headphones to community leaders sharing tales and knowledge.

Focus on the Nasal Passages

Why the nose? It may appear whimsical, but the exhibit honors a rarely recognized scientific wonder: scientists have found that in less than one second, the reindeer's nose can warm the ambient air it inhales by 80 degrees celsius, allowing the creature to survive in inhospitable Arctic climates. Enlarging the nose to human-scale dimensions, Sara says, "produces a perception of inferiority that you as a person are not superior over nature." She is a ex- journalist, children's author, and land defender, who hails from a reindeer-herding family in the far north of Norway. "Possibly that generates the chance to shift your viewpoint or evoke some modesty," she states.

A Tribute to Sámi Culture

The winding design is one of several elements in Sara's absorbing exhibition celebrating the traditions, understanding, and philosophy of the Sámi, the continent's original inhabitants. Partially migratory, the Sámi total approximately 100,000 people spread across the Norwegian north, the Finnish Arctic, the Swedish Lapland, and the Kola region (an territory they call Sápmi). They've faced oppression, cultural suppression, and repression of their dialect by all four countries. By focusing on the reindeer, an animal at the core of the Sámi belief system and origin tale, the art also highlights the group's challenges connected to the climate crisis, property rights, and imperialism.

Meaning in Components

Along the extended access ramp, there's a looming, 26-meter structure of pelts entangled by electrical wires. It serves as a analogy for the societal frameworks constraining the Sámi. Like an electrical tower, part spiritual ascent, this section of the artwork, called Goavve-, relates to the Sámi name for an severe climatic event, wherein solid coatings of ice develop as changing temperatures thaw and solidify again the snow, locking in the reindeers' main cold-season sustenance, lichen. This phenomenon is a consequence of planetary warming, which is occurring up to much more rapidly in the Polar region than elsewhere.

Three years ago, I traveled to see Sara in a remote town during a icy season and joined Sámi reindeer keepers on their Arctic vehicles in freezing temperatures as they transported trailers of animal nutrition on to the exposed frozen landscape to dispense manually. These animals gathered round us, pawing the slippery ground in vain attempts for vegetative pieces. This expensive and laborious process is having a drastic effect on reindeer husbandry—and on the animals' independence. Yet the other option is starvation. As these icy periods become commonplace, reindeer are dying—a number from starvation, others suffocating after falling into streams through thinning ice sheets. To some extent, the art is a tribute to them. "By overlapping of components, in a way I'm bringing the phenomenon to London," says Sara.

Contrasting Worldviews

The sculpture also emphasizes the clear difference between the industrial understanding of power as a resource to be exploited for economic benefit and existence and the Sámi philosophy of life force as an natural essence in creatures, people, and nature. Tate Modern's history as a coal and oil power station is tied up in this, as is what the Sámi consider environmental exploitation by Nordic countries. In their efforts to be leaders for clean sources, these states have locked horns with the Sámi over the construction of wind energy projects, river barriers, and mines on their ancestral land; the Sámi argue their legal protections, ways of life, and way of life are endangered. "It's challenging being such a small minority to stand your ground when the arguments are based on environmental protection," Sara comments. "Extractivism has appropriated the language of ecology, but yet it's just attempting to find more suitable ways to persist in practices of expenditure."

Personal Struggles

She and her relatives have themselves clashed with the state authorities over its tightening rules on animal husbandry. Previously, Sara's sibling undertook a series of ultimately unsuccessful lawsuits over the mandatory slaughter of his livestock, supposedly to stop overgrazing. In support, Sara produced a extended set of creations titled Pile O'Sápmi featuring a colossal screen of numerous animal bones, which was shown at the 2017 event Documenta 14 and later purchased by the public gallery, where it hangs in the entrance.

The Role of Art in Advocacy

For numerous Indigenous people, creative work seems the exclusive domain in which they can be understood by people of other nations. Two years ago, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|