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Guests to the renowned gallery are familiar to unexpected displays in its vast Turbine Hall. They've relaxed under an man-made sun, descended down helter skelters, and observed robotic jellyfish hovering through the air. But this marks the inaugural time they will be engaging themselves in the detailed nasal passages of a reindeer. The latest artist commission for this cavernous space—created by Native Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—invites visitors into a maze-like construction based on the expanded interior of a reindeer's nasal airways. Inside, they can stroll around or relax on skins, tuning in on earphones to community leaders telling narratives and wisdom.

Why the Nose?

Why choose the nasal structure? It might seem quirky, but the exhibit pays tribute to a little-known natural marvel: scientists have uncovered that in less than one second, the reindeer's nose can warm the ambient air it inhales by eighty degrees, helping the animal to survive in harsh Arctic conditions. Scaling the nose to bigger than a person, Sara notes, "generates a perception of smallness that you as a person are not superior over nature." The artist is a former reporter, young adult author, and land defender, who hails from a pastoral family in northern Norway. "Perhaps that creates the possibility to alter your viewpoint or spark some modesty," she states.

A Tribute to Indigenous Heritage

The winding structure is among various features in Sara's engaging commission celebrating the traditions, understanding, and philosophy of the Sámi, the sole native group in Europe. Traditionally mobile, the Sámi number roughly 100,000 people distributed across northern Norway, the Finnish Arctic, the Swedish Lapland, and the Russian Arctic (an region they call Sápmi). They have faced oppression, cultural suppression, and eradication of their dialect by all four states. By focusing on the reindeer, an creature at the heart of the Sámi mythology and origin tale, the work also draws attention to the people's struggles connected to the climate crisis, land dispossession, and external control.

Meaning in Materials

At the extended entry slope, there's a looming, 26-meter structure of reindeer hides ensnared by utility lines. It represents a metaphor for the governance and financial structures restricting the Sámi. Partly a utility pole, part spiritual ascent, this section of the artwork, titled Goavve-, refers to the Sámi term for an severe climatic event, in which thick sheets of ice develop as fluctuating conditions liquefy and refreeze the snow, encasing the reindeers' main winter sustenance, fungus. The condition is a outcome of planetary warming, which is happening up to at an accelerated rate in the Polar region than in other regions.

Previously, I met with Sara in a remote town during a goavvi winter and went with Sámi pastoralists on their snowmobiles in freezing temperatures as they transported trailers of food pellets on to the exposed Arctic plains to distribute manually. The herd gathered round us, digging the icy ground in futility for mossy bits. This resource-intensive and demanding procedure is having a significant effect on herding practices—and on the animals' independence. Yet the choice is starvation. When such conditions become frequent, reindeer are perishing—some from hunger, others drowning after plunging into water bodies through thinning ice sheets. In a sense, the work is a memorial to them. "With the layering of materials, in a way I'm bringing the phenomenon to London," says Sara.

Diverging Worldviews

The sculpture also underscores the stark divergence between the modern understanding of electricity as a commodity to be utilized for gain and existence and the Sámi worldview of energy as an inherent life force in creatures, individuals, and nature. Tate Modern's past as a industrial facility is tied up in this, as is what the Sámi view as eco-imperialism by regional governments. In their efforts to be exemplars for sustainable power, Nordic nations have locked horns with the Sámi over the building of windfarms, water power facilities, and digging operations on their native soil; the Sámi assert their fundamental freedoms, livelihoods, and culture are endangered. "It's hard being such a limited population to defend yourself when the justifications are grounded in saving the world," Sara observes. "Extractivism has adopted the discourse of environmentalism, but yet it's just aiming to find more suitable ways to persist in habits of consumption."

Family Struggles

Sara and her kin have themselves clashed with the national administration over its ever-stricter regulations on herding. Previously, Sara's sibling undertook a sequence of ultimately unsuccessful lawsuits over the required reduction of his animals, supposedly to stop vegetation depletion. To back him, Sara developed a extended series of creations titled Pile O'Sápmi comprising a colossal curtain of numerous cranial remains, which was exhibited at the 2017's show Documenta 14 and later purchased by the national institution, where it resides in the entryway.

The Role of Art in Awareness

Among the community, art is the sole realm in which they can be listened to by outsiders. Recently, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|