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Guests to the renowned gallery are familiar to surprising displays in its expansive Turbine Hall. They have sunbathed under an man-made sun, descended down spiral slides, and witnessed AI-powered jellyfish floating through the air. However this marks the first time they will be venturing themselves in the complex nose cavities of a reindeer. The latest creative installation for this cavernous space—created by Native Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—welcomes patrons into a labyrinthine construction inspired by the enlarged interior of a reindeer's nasal passages. Inside, they can stroll around or unwind on pelts, listening on earphones to Sámi elders telling tales and insights.

The Significance of the Nose

Why choose the nasal structure? It might appear quirky, but the installation honors a little-known biological feat: scientists have found that in under a second, the reindeer's nose can raise the temperature of the ambient air it takes in by 80°C, allowing the creature to survive in extreme Arctic climates. Scaling the nose to human-scale dimensions, Sara says, "produces a feeling of inferiority that you as a human being are not superior over nature." The artist is a former journalist, writer for kids, and land defender, who is from a reindeer-herding family in the far north of Norway. "Maybe that fosters the possibility to shift your viewpoint or evoke some humbleness," she continues.

An Homage to Traditional Ways

The labyrinthine installation 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 number about 100,000 people distributed across northern Norway, Finland, the Swedish Lapland, and the Kola region (an territory they call Sápmi). They've endured discrimination, integration policies, and suppression of their language by all four nations. By focusing on the reindeer, an animal at the center of the Sámi belief system and founding narrative, the installation also draws attention to the community's struggles relating to the global warming, property rights, and imperialism.

Metaphor in Components

Along the long access slope, there's a towering, eighty-five-foot formation of reindeer hides ensnared by power and light cables. It serves as a analogy for the political and economic systems constraining the Sámi. Part pylon, part celestial ladder, this section of the installation, titled Goavve-, refers to the Sámi name for an severe climatic event, in which dense sheets of ice form as fluctuating weather melt and solidify again the snow, locking in the reindeers' key cold-season food, lichen. The condition is a result of climate change, which is taking place up to at an accelerated rate in the Arctic than in other regions.

A few years back, I traveled to see Sara in Guovdageaidnu during a goavvi winter and went with Sámi herders on their motorized sleds in biting cold as they transported containers of animal nutrition on to the wind-scoured frozen landscape to dispense manually. The herd crowded round us, pawing the icy ground in futility for lichen-covered bits. This costly and laborious method is having a drastic impact on reindeer husbandry—and on the animals' natural survival. Yet the alternative is starvation. As goavvi winters become routine, reindeer are dying—some from hunger, others submerging after falling into water bodies through prematurely melting ice. On one level, the installation is a tribute to them. "By overlapping of materials, in a way I'm bringing the condition to London," says Sara.

Diverging Perspectives

The sculpture also underscores the clear divergence between the industrial interpretation of energy as a resource to be exploited for gain and survival and the Sámi worldview of energy as an inherent essence in animals, individuals, and the environment. Tate Modern's legacy as a industrial facility is connected to this, as is what the Sámi consider eco-imperialism by regional governments. In their efforts to be standard bearers for clean sources, these states have disagreed with the Sámi over the development of turbine fields, river barriers, and digging operations on their traditional territory; the Sámi contend their human rights, 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 grounded in environmental protection," Sara observes. "Resource exploitation has adopted the rhetoric of environmentalism, but still it's just attempting to find alternative ways to maintain patterns of consumption."

Individual Conflicts

Sara and her family have themselves disagreed with the Norwegian government over its ever-stricter policies on herding. Previously, Sara's brother embarked on a sequence of ultimately unsuccessful lawsuits over the mandatory slaughter of his herd, supposedly to stop vegetation depletion. To back him, Sara produced a four-year series of artworks titled Pile O'Sápmi including a massive screen of four hundred reindeer skulls, which was displayed at the 2017 show Documenta 14 and later purchased by the National Museum of Oslo, where it is displayed in the entrance.

The Role of Art in Advocacy

Among the community, art seems the exclusive domain in which they can be listened to by people of other nations. Two years ago, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|