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Guests to the renowned gallery are accustomed to unusual experiences in its expansive Turbine Hall. They've relaxed under an artificial sun, descended down spiral slides, and seen AI-powered sea creatures hovering through the air. Yet this marks the inaugural time they will be engaging themselves in the intricate nasal chambers of a reindeer. The current creative installation for this immense space—designed by Indigenous Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—welcomes patrons into a labyrinthine construction modeled after the expanded interior of a reindeer's nose airways. Once inside, they can stroll around or chill out on pelts, listening on earphones to Sámi elders imparting narratives and knowledge.

The Significance of the Nose

Why choose the nasal structure? It may seem quirky, but the exhibit celebrates a obscure natural marvel: experts have uncovered that in less than one second, the reindeer's nose can heat the incoming air it takes in by 80 degrees celsius, enabling the animal to survive in inhospitable Arctic climates. Enlarging the nose to human-scale dimensions, Sara notes, "generates a sense of insignificance that you as a human being are not dominant over nature." She is a former journalist, young adult author, and land defender, who hails from a reindeer-herding family in the far north of Norway. "Perhaps that generates the chance to change your perspective or evoke some humbleness," she adds.

A Tribute to Traditional Ways

The winding installation is part of a elements in Sara's engaging commission celebrating the culture, science, and worldview of the Sámi, the continent's original inhabitants. Semi-nomadic, the Sámi count roughly 100,000 people ranged across the Norwegian north, Finland, Sweden, and the Kola region (an territory they call Sápmi). They have experienced oppression, forced assimilation, and eradication of their language by all four nations. By focusing on the reindeer, an animal at the center of the Sámi belief system and origin tale, the art also spotlights the people's issues relating to the environmental emergency, loss of territory, and colonialism.

Meaning in Materials

At the extended entry incline, there's a soaring, 26-meter sculpture of pelts ensnared by electrical wires. It represents a analogy for the societal frameworks limiting the Sámi. Part pylon, part celestial ladder, this component of the artwork, named Goavve-, relates to the Sámi word for an severe climatic event, whereby dense layers of ice appear as fluctuating weather liquefy and ice over the snow, trapping the reindeers' key cold-season nourishment, fungus. This phenomenon is a outcome of planetary warming, which is occurring up to much more rapidly in the Arctic than in other regions.

Three years ago, I visited Sara in the Norwegian far north during a severe cold period and accompanied Sámi pastoralists on their motorized sleds in freezing temperatures as they transported containers of supplementary feed on to the wind-scoured Arctic plains to dispense through labor. The herd gathered round us, scratching the frozen ground in futility for mossy morsels. This costly and labour-intensive procedure is having a significant influence on reindeer husbandry—and on the animals' self-sufficiency. However the other option is death. As goavvi winters become routine, reindeer are dying—some from hunger, others drowning after plunging into lakes and rivers through unstable frozen surfaces. In a sense, the installation is a monument to them. "By overlapping of materials, in a way I'm transporting the condition to London," says Sara.

Diverging Perspectives

The sculpture also highlights the sharp contrast between the modern understanding of electricity as a resource to be exploited for profit and survival and the Sámi worldview of energy as an inherent power in creatures, humans, and nature. Tate Modern's legacy as a coal and oil power station is connected to this, as is what the Sámi consider eco-imperialism by Nordic countries. As they strive to be exemplars for renewable energy, Nordic nations have clashed with the Sámi over the building of wind energy projects, water power facilities, and mines on their native soil; the Sámi argue their legal protections, ways of life, and culture are at risk. "It's challenging being such a tiny group to stand your ground when the reasons are rooted in global sustainability," Sara notes. "Extractivism has adopted the rhetoric of sustainability, but nonetheless it's just aiming to find more suitable ways to continue practices of use."

Individual Challenges

Sara and her relatives have personally conflicted with the Norwegian government over its tightening rules on animal husbandry. In 2016, Sara's brother undertook a sequence of unsuccessful legal cases over the forced culling of his animals, ostensibly to stop excessive feeding. As a show of solidarity, Sara produced a multi-year set of pieces called Pile O'Sápmi including a massive curtain of numerous animal bones, which was shown at the 2017 event Documenta 14 and later obtained by the public gallery, where it hangs in the lobby.

Creative Expression as Awareness

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