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Visitors to the renowned gallery are used to unusual experiences in its spacious Turbine Hall. They have basked under an simulated sun, slid down amusement rides, and seen AI-powered sea creatures floating through the air. But this marks the first time they will be engaging themselves in the detailed nasal chambers of a reindeer. The newest artistic project for this cavernous space—designed by Native Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—encourages gallerygoers into a labyrinthine design modeled after the expanded interior of a reindeer's nose passages. Upon entering, they can stroll around or chill out on reindeer hides, listening on earphones to Sámi elders telling narratives and wisdom.

Why the Nose?

Why the nose? It may seem whimsical, but the artwork honors a little-known scientific wonder: experts have found that in under a second, the reindeer's nose can warm the ambient air it takes in by 80 degrees celsius, enabling the creature to endure in harsh Arctic conditions. Scaling the nose to larger than human size, Sara notes, "creates a sense of inferiority that you as a human being are not superior over nature." Sara is a former writer, children's author, and rights advocate, who is from a pastoral family in northern Norway. "Maybe that generates the possibility to alter your viewpoint or spark some humbleness," she adds.

An Homage to Traditional Ways

The maze-like installation is one of several components in Sara's immersive art project honoring the heritage, understanding, and beliefs of the Sámi, Europe's only Indigenous people. Semi-nomadic, the Sámi number roughly 100,000 people distributed across northern Norway, Finland, the Swedish Lapland, and the Russian Arctic (an territory they call Sápmi). They've endured oppression, integration policies, and suppression of their language by all four states. Through highlighting the reindeer, an animal at the heart of the Sámi cosmology and origin tale, the art also spotlights the group's struggles associated with the climate crisis, loss of territory, and imperialism.

Metaphor in Elements

Along the extended access slope, there's a towering, 26-metre structure of pelts trapped by power and light cables. It serves as a analogy for the societal frameworks constraining the Sámi. Partly a utility pole, part heavenly staircase, this part of the exhibit, titled Goavve-, relates to the Sámi name for an harsh environmental condition, wherein thick sheets of ice form as varying weather melt and ice over the snow, encasing the reindeers' primary winter sustenance, fungus. This phenomenon is a consequence of climate change, which is happening up to four times faster in the Polar region than globally.

A few years back, I met with Sara in Guovdageaidnu during a icy season and accompanied Sámi reindeer keepers on their Arctic vehicles in freezing temperatures as they hauled carts of animal nutrition on to the wind-scoured Arctic plains to distribute through labor. The reindeer gathered round us, scratching the frozen ground in vain attempts for mossy pieces. This costly and labour-intensive method is having a severe impact on herding practices—and on the animals' self-sufficiency. But the alternative is starvation. When such conditions become commonplace, reindeer are dying—a number from starvation, others suffocating after sinking in lakes and rivers through unstable frozen surfaces. To some extent, the art is a tribute to them. "By overlapping of elements, in a way I'm introducing the goavvi to London," says Sara.

Opposing Belief Systems

The installation also highlights the sharp difference between the western interpretation of electricity as a commodity to be utilized for economic benefit and survival and the Sámi philosophy of energy as an inherent power in creatures, individuals, and land. Tate Modern's legacy as a industrial facility is connected to this, as is what the Sámi consider environmental exploitation by Scandinavian states. In their efforts to be exemplars for renewable energy, Nordic nations have locked horns with the Sámi over the building of windfarms, water power facilities, and digging operations on their ancestral land; the Sámi argue their fundamental freedoms, livelihoods, and culture are endangered. "It's hard being such a limited population to defend yourself when the justifications are rooted in global sustainability," Sara notes. "Extractivism has co-opted the rhetoric of ecology, but still it's just aiming to find better ways to persist in habits of use."

Family Struggles

The artist and her relatives have personally disagreed with the Norwegian government over its tightening policies on herding. In 2016, Sara's sibling embarked on a series of unsuccessful lawsuits over the required reduction of his livestock, supposedly to stop overgrazing. As a show of solidarity, Sara produced a extended set of pieces called Pile O'Sápmi comprising a huge drape of numerous animal bones, which was exhibited at the the event Documenta 14 and later obtained by the National Museum of Oslo, where it is displayed in the lobby.

The Role of Art in Activism

Among the community, visual expression appears the only sphere in which they can be heard by outsiders. Two years ago, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|