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Attendees to the renowned gallery are used to unexpected displays in its expansive Turbine Hall. They've sunbathed under an man-made sun, slid down helter skelters, and observed AI-powered sea creatures hovering through the air. Yet this marks the first time they will be engaging themselves in the intricate nasal passages of a reindeer. The newest artist commission for this immense space—developed by Native Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—encourages visitors into a maze-like structure inspired by the enlarged interior of a reindeer's nose airways. Once inside, they can stroll around or chill out on reindeer hides, listening on headphones to Sámi elders imparting tales and insights.

Why the Nose?

Why choose the nasal structure? It may appear whimsical, but the exhibit pays tribute to a obscure biological feat: experts have found that in a fraction of a second, the reindeer's nose can heat the ambient air it takes in by eighty degrees, enabling the creature to endure in harsh Arctic conditions. Scaling the nose to larger than human size, Sara notes, "generates a sense of insignificance that you as a human being are not in control over nature." Sara is a former reporter, young adult author, and land defender, who comes from a herding family in northern Norway. "Maybe that creates the chance to alter your perspective or evoke some modesty," she continues.

A Celebration to Indigenous Heritage

The maze-like structure is part of a features in Sara's engaging art project showcasing the traditions, science, and philosophy of the Sámi, the continent's original inhabitants. Partially migratory, the Sámi total about 100,000 people spread across the Norwegian north, Finland, Sweden, and the Russian Arctic (an region they call Sápmi). They've endured discrimination, cultural suppression, and repression 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 installation also highlights the people's struggles associated with the climate crisis, property rights, and colonialism.

Symbolism in Components

On the long entrance slope, there's a looming, 26-metre sculpture of reindeer hides ensnared by utility lines. It serves as a symbol for the political and economic systems limiting the Sámi. Part pylon, part celestial ladder, this component of the exhibit, named Goavve-, relates to the Sámi name for an extreme weather phenomenon, whereby thick sheets of ice develop as varying weather melt and ice over the snow, locking in the reindeers' key winter nourishment, lichen. This phenomenon is a result of planetary warming, which is taking place up to much more rapidly in the Arctic than globally.

Three years ago, I met with Sara in a remote town during a goavvi winter and accompanied Sámi pastoralists on their snowmobiles in biting cold as they transported trailers of supplementary feed on to the exposed frozen landscape to provide through labor. The reindeer gathered round us, pawing the slippery ground in futility for lichen-covered pieces. This expensive and labour-intensive procedure is having a severe impact on animal rearing—and on the animals' natural survival. However the choice is malnutrition. As these icy periods become routine, reindeer are perishing—some from lack of food, others submerging after sinking in lakes and rivers through prematurely melting ice. In a sense, the work is a monument to them. "With the layering of elements, in a way I'm transporting the condition to London," says Sara.

Contrasting Worldviews

This artwork also emphasizes the clear contrast between the industrial view of electricity as a resource to be exploited for economic benefit and livelihood and the Sámi philosophy of vitality as an natural life force in creatures, people, and land. Tate Modern's legacy as a coal and oil power station is linked with this, as is what the Sámi view as green colonialism by Nordic countries. In their efforts to be exemplars for clean sources, these states have disagreed with the Sámi over the construction of wind energy projects, hydroelectric dams, and extraction sites on their ancestral land; the Sámi assert their human rights, incomes, and culture are endangered. "It's hard being such a limited population to defend yourself when the reasons are rooted in environmental protection," Sara notes. "Extractivism has appropriated the rhetoric of ecology, but nonetheless it's just aiming to find better ways to maintain habits of consumption."

Individual Challenges

Sara and her kin have personally conflicted with the national administration over its tightening rules on reindeer management. Previously, Sara's sibling undertook a sequence of unsuccessful legal cases over the forced culling of his livestock, apparently to stop vegetation depletion. To back him, Sara developed a extended set of pieces titled Pile O'Sápmi including a massive drape of four hundred animal bones, which was shown at the 2017's show Documenta 14 and later purchased by the national institution, where it is displayed in the lobby.

Art as Advocacy

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