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Attendees to the renowned gallery are accustomed to surprising displays in its expansive Turbine Hall. They have relaxed under an artificial sun, slid down spiral slides, and observed robotic jellyfish hovering through the air. Yet this marks the first time they will be venturing themselves in the intricate nasal passages of a reindeer. The latest artistic project for this immense space—developed by Native Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—invites patrons into a maze-like construction based on the enlarged interior of a reindeer's nasal passages. Once inside, they can wander around or relax on reindeer hides, tuning in on headphones to community leaders telling stories and knowledge.

Why the Nose?

Why the nose? It might sound whimsical, but the installation celebrates a little-known natural marvel: scientists have uncovered that in less than one second, the reindeer's nose can heat the incoming air it takes in by 80°C, helping the animal to thrive in inhospitable Arctic climates. Scaling the nose to larger than human size, Sara explains, "creates a perception of smallness that you as a person are not dominant over nature." Sara is a former writer, young adult author, and environmental activist, who comes from a herding family in the far north of Norway. "Possibly that fosters the possibility to shift your viewpoint or spark some humbleness," she adds.

A Tribute to Traditional Ways

The maze-like design is part of a components in Sara's absorbing art project honoring the heritage, understanding, and beliefs of the Sámi, the continent's original inhabitants. Traditionally mobile, the Sámi total about 100,000 people distributed across northern Norway, Finland, the Swedish Lapland, and the Kola region (an area they call Sápmi). They have faced oppression, forced assimilation, and eradication of their tongue by all four nations. Through highlighting the reindeer, an animal at the heart of the Sámi mythology and founding narrative, the art also spotlights the community's struggles associated with the environmental emergency, property rights, and colonialism.

Metaphor in Materials

On the lengthy entry ramp, there's a soaring, 26-meter structure of skins trapped by utility lines. It serves as a metaphor for the governance and financial structures limiting the Sámi. Part pylon, part heavenly staircase, this part of the installation, titled Goavve-, refers to the Sámi word for an severe climatic event, wherein thick coatings of ice appear as changing conditions liquefy and ice over the snow, trapping the reindeers' key winter sustenance, lichen. The condition is a result of climate change, which is happening up to much more rapidly in the Far North than in other regions.

Previously, I met with Sara in Guovdageaidnu during a icy season and accompanied Sámi herders on their Arctic vehicles in freezing temperatures as they hauled containers of food pellets on to the exposed Arctic plains to provide manually. The reindeer crowded round us, digging the frozen ground in vain for mossy pieces. This expensive and demanding process is having a severe influence on reindeer husbandry—and on the animals' natural survival. But the choice is malnutrition. As goavvi winters become commonplace, reindeer are dying—a number from starvation, others suffocating after plunging into streams through prematurely melting ice. On one level, the work is a tribute to them. "By overlapping of materials, in a way I'm transporting the phenomenon to London," says Sara.

Diverging Worldviews

The installation also highlights the clear contrast between the industrial understanding of power as a resource to be utilized for economic benefit and existence and the Sámi philosophy of energy as an innate power in animals, people, and land. Tate Modern's legacy as a fossil fuel plant is connected to this, as is what the Sámi view as eco-imperialism by Nordic countries. In their efforts to be leaders for renewable energy, these states have clashed with the Sámi over the development of windfarms, hydroelectric dams, and digging operations on their ancestral land; the Sámi argue their fundamental freedoms, livelihoods, and traditions are endangered. "It's hard being such a limited population to protect your rights when the arguments are based on saving the world," Sara comments. "Extractivism has co-opted the language of ecology, but yet it's just striving to find alternative ways to maintain patterns of expenditure."

Personal Conflicts

She and her kin have personally conflicted with the national administration over its ever-stricter policies on reindeer management. A few years ago, Sara's sibling initiated a set of ultimately unsuccessful court actions over the mandatory slaughter of his livestock, apparently to stop excessive feeding. To back him, Sara developed a multi-year series of creations titled Pile O'Sápmi featuring a massive curtain of 400 animal bones, which was exhibited at the 2017's event Documenta 14 and later obtained by the National Museum of Oslo, where it resides in the entryway.

Art as Advocacy

For numerous Indigenous people, visual expression is the sole realm in which they can be heard by outsiders. In 2022, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|