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Visitors to the renowned gallery are used to surprising displays in its spacious Turbine Hall. They've basked under an man-made sun, glided down spiral slides, and witnessed AI-powered jellyfish floating through the air. However this marks the first time they will be immersing themselves in the complex nose cavities of a reindeer. The current artist commission for this huge space—designed by Native Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—welcomes gallerygoers into a winding structure inspired by the scaled-up interior of a reindeer's nose airways. Once inside, they can wander around or chill out on pelts, listening on earphones to Sámi elders imparting stories and insights.

Focus on the Nasal Passages

Why the nose? It might seem quirky, but the artwork celebrates a rarely recognized natural marvel: researchers have uncovered that in a fraction of a second, the reindeer's nose can heat the incoming air it breathes in by 80 degrees celsius, enabling the animal to thrive in extreme Arctic conditions. Scaling the nose to larger than human size, Sara says, "generates a feeling of smallness that you as a human being are not superior over nature." The artist is a former writer, children's author, and environmental activist, who hails from a herding family in the far north of Norway. "Possibly that fosters the potential to alter your outlook or spark some humbleness," she continues.

A Tribute to Indigenous Heritage

The maze-like design is part of a components in Sara's immersive art project honoring the traditions, knowledge, and philosophy of the Sámi, the sole native group in Europe. Partially migratory, the Sámi count roughly 100,000 people spread across the Norwegian north, Finland, the Swedish Lapland, and the Russian Arctic (an territory they call Sápmi). They have endured discrimination, integration policies, and suppression of their dialect by all four countries. With an emphasis on the reindeer, an creature at the center of the Sámi belief system and creation story, the work also spotlights the community's struggles relating to the global warming, property rights, and external control.

Symbolism in Elements

Along the lengthy access incline, there's a soaring, 26-meter formation of skins entangled by electrical wires. It can be read as a symbol for the societal frameworks restricting the Sámi. Like an electrical tower, part spiritual ascent, this part of the exhibit, called Goavve-, relates to the Sámi name for an harsh environmental condition, whereby dense coatings of ice form as changing temperatures thaw and ice over the snow, trapping the reindeers' key cold-season sustenance, moss. The condition is a result of planetary warming, which is taking place up to four times faster in the Arctic than elsewhere.

Previously, I traveled to see Sara in a remote town during a severe cold period and accompanied Sámi herders on their Arctic vehicles in chilly conditions as they carried carts of supplementary feed on to the exposed tundra to distribute by hand. The reindeer gathered round us, digging the slippery ground in vain for mossy pieces. This expensive and labour-intensive process is having a drastic effect on reindeer husbandry—and on the animals' self-sufficiency. However the other option is death. When such conditions become routine, reindeer are perishing—some from lack of food, others suffocating after falling into streams through prematurely melting ice. On one level, the work is a monument to them. "Through the stacking of components, in a way I'm introducing the condition to London," says Sara.

Diverging Belief Systems

The sculpture also underscores the sharp difference between the industrial understanding of power as a asset to be exploited for economic benefit and existence and the Sámi worldview of vitality as an innate power in animals, individuals, and land. Tate Modern's past as a coal and oil power station is tied up in this, as is what the Sámi see as eco-imperialism by Scandinavian states. As they strive to be exemplars for clean sources, Nordic nations have clashed with the Sámi over the construction of windfarms, hydroelectric dams, and digging operations on their traditional territory; the Sámi contend their legal protections, incomes, and way of life are endangered. "It's very difficult being such a tiny group to protect your rights when the arguments are based on global sustainability," Sara comments. "Resource exploitation has appropriated the rhetoric of environmentalism, but nonetheless it's just attempting to find alternative ways to persist in practices of use."

Individual Struggles

The artist and her family have themselves clashed with the Norwegian government over its ever-stricter policies on herding. In 2016, Sara's sibling undertook a sequence of unsuccessful court actions over the mandatory slaughter of his animals, supposedly to stop vegetation depletion. To back him, Sara produced a multi-year set of creations called Pile O'Sápmi featuring a huge curtain of four hundred cranial remains, which was shown at the the show Documenta 14 and later purchased by the national institution, where it resides in the lobby.

Creative Expression as Activism

For numerous Indigenous people, visual expression is the sole sphere in which they can be listened to by the global community. In 2022, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|