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Visitors to the renowned gallery are familiar to unexpected encounters in its vast Turbine Hall. They have basked under an man-made sun, slid down amusement rides, and witnessed AI-powered jellyfish floating through the air. Yet this marks the inaugural time they will be engaging themselves in the intricate nose cavities of a reindeer. The latest artist commission for this cavernous space—developed by Indigenous Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—welcomes visitors into a winding structure modeled after the enlarged interior of a reindeer's nose cavities. Upon entering, they can wander around or unwind 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 playful, but the exhibit pays tribute to a rarely recognized biological feat: scientists have uncovered that in less than one second, the reindeer's nose can heat the incoming air it inhales by eighty degrees, allowing the creature to survive in harsh Arctic conditions. Enlarging the nose to bigger than a person, Sara notes, "generates a sense of inferiority that you as a person are not superior over nature." Sara is a former journalist, children's author, and environmental activist, who is from a herding family in the far north of Norway. "Maybe that generates the chance to shift your outlook or trigger some humility," she states.

A Tribute to Traditional Ways

The maze-like design is among various components in Sara's engaging exhibition celebrating the heritage, science, and worldview of the Sámi, the sole native group in Europe. Traditionally mobile, the Sámi count roughly 100,000 people distributed across the Norwegian north, Finland, Sweden, and the Kola region (an territory they call Sápmi). They have experienced persecution, cultural suppression, and suppression of their language by all four nations. With an emphasis on the reindeer, an creature at the core of the Sámi belief system and creation story, the art also spotlights the group's challenges associated with the climate crisis, loss of territory, and imperialism.

Meaning in Materials

Along the extended entrance incline, there's a looming, 26-metre sculpture of skins ensnared by power and light cables. It serves as a metaphor for the political and economic systems limiting the Sámi. Like an electrical tower, part heavenly staircase, this component of the artwork, named Goavve-, refers to the Sámi name for an severe climatic event, whereby thick layers of ice appear as changing weather thaw and ice over the snow, locking in the reindeers' key cold-season sustenance, moss. The condition is a consequence of climate change, which is happening up to much more rapidly in the Far North than elsewhere.

A few years back, I traveled to see Sara in the Norwegian far north during a icy season and went with Sámi reindeer keepers on their snowmobiles in biting cold as they hauled trailers of supplementary feed on to the barren tundra to provide manually. The reindeer surrounded round us, scratching the frozen ground in vain for lichen-covered pieces. This expensive and demanding method is having a drastic effect on reindeer husbandry—and on the animals' natural survival. But the other option is malnutrition. When such conditions become frequent, reindeer are perishing—a number from starvation, others drowning after sinking in water bodies through prematurely melting ice. In a sense, the art is a memorial to them. "By overlapping of elements, in a way I'm introducing the goavvi to London," says Sara.

Opposing Belief Systems

This artwork also underscores the stark divergence between the modern interpretation of electricity as a asset to be exploited for gain and existence and the Sámi worldview of energy as an natural power in creatures, people, and the environment. Tate Modern's legacy as a industrial facility is linked with this, as is what the Sámi view as eco-imperialism by regional governments. As they strive to be leaders for sustainable power, Scandinavian countries have locked horns with the Sámi over the development of turbine fields, hydroelectric dams, and digging operations on their native soil; the Sámi assert their legal protections, ways of life, and way of life are threatened. "It's very difficult being such a limited population to stand your ground when the arguments are rooted in environmental protection," Sara comments. "Mining practices has adopted the rhetoric of environmentalism, but still it's just aiming to find better ways to maintain practices of consumption."

Family Struggles

The artist and her family have themselves conflicted with the state authorities over its tightening regulations on herding. In 2016, Sara's sibling embarked on a sequence of unsuccessful legal cases over the forced culling of his animals, supposedly to stop excessive feeding. In support, Sara produced a multi-year series of pieces named Pile O'Sápmi featuring a colossal screen of numerous reindeer skulls, which was shown at the 2017's show Documenta 14 and later purchased by the National Museum of Oslo, where it resides in the lobby.

Creative Expression as Advocacy

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