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Visitors to the renowned gallery are accustomed to surprising encounters in its spacious Turbine Hall. They've basked under an man-made sun, descended down helter skelters, and seen AI-powered sea creatures floating through the air. Yet this marks the inaugural time they will be immersing themselves in the complex nasal cavities of a reindeer. The newest artist commission for this immense space—designed by Native Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—invites visitors into a maze-like construction based on the expanded inside of a reindeer's nose airways. Upon entering, they can stroll around or chill out on skins, tuning in on earphones to community leaders imparting stories and wisdom.

Why the Nose?

Why choose the nasal structure? It could seem quirky, but the artwork celebrates a rarely recognized natural marvel: experts have discovered that in a fraction of a second, the reindeer's nose can heat the surrounding air it breathes in by 80°C, helping the animal to survive in inhospitable Arctic temperatures. Enlarging the nose to bigger than a person, Sara says, "creates a feeling of insignificance that you as a person are not superior over nature." Sara is a former journalist, writer for kids, and rights advocate, who hails from a pastoral family in the far north of Norway. "Maybe that generates the chance to change your outlook or evoke some modesty," she continues.

A Tribute to Sámi Culture

The winding installation is one of several features in Sara's immersive commission showcasing the culture, knowledge, and worldview of the Sámi, the continent's original inhabitants. Traditionally mobile, the Sámi total about 100,000 people distributed across the Norwegian north, the Finnish Arctic, the Swedish Lapland, and the Kola region (an territory they call Sápmi). They have endured persecution, forced assimilation, and suppression of their language by all four nations. By focusing on the reindeer, an animal at the core of the Sámi cosmology and origin tale, the work also draws attention to the community's struggles associated with the climate crisis, land dispossession, and external control.

Symbolism in Materials

At the long entry incline, there's a looming, eighty-five-foot formation of reindeer hides entangled by utility lines. It serves as a symbol for the political and economic systems restricting the Sámi. Like an electrical tower, part celestial ladder, this section of the installation, titled Goavve-, points to the Sámi term for an extreme weather phenomenon, wherein dense layers of ice develop as changing conditions liquefy and solidify again the snow, encasing the reindeers' primary winter nourishment, lichen. Goavvi is a outcome of climate change, which is occurring up to at an accelerated rate in the Far North than in other regions.

Previously, I visited Sara in the Norwegian far north during a icy season and accompanied Sámi pastoralists on their motorized sleds in biting cold as they hauled containers of food pellets on to the exposed tundra to dispense by hand. The reindeer surrounded round us, pawing the icy ground in vain for vegetative morsels. This costly and labour-intensive process is having a severe effect on herding practices—and on the animals' self-sufficiency. But the other option is death. When such conditions become commonplace, reindeer are perishing—a number from starvation, others drowning after falling into water bodies through unstable frozen surfaces. On one level, the art is a memorial to them. "By overlapping of elements, in a way I'm transporting the condition to London," says Sara.

Diverging Worldviews

The installation also emphasizes the stark difference between the modern understanding of energy as a resource to be utilized for profit and livelihood and the Sámi outlook of vitality as an inherent essence in creatures, individuals, and land. Tate Modern's legacy as a fossil fuel plant is tied up in this, as is what the Sámi see as eco-imperialism by Nordic countries. In their efforts to be leaders for sustainable power, Nordic nations have disagreed with the Sámi over the development of turbine fields, water power facilities, and extraction sites on their ancestral land; the Sámi contend their fundamental freedoms, livelihoods, and culture are threatened. "It's very difficult being such a limited population to stand your ground when the reasons are based on environmental protection," Sara comments. "Mining practices has co-opted the language of ecology, but yet it's just aiming to find alternative ways to continue practices of expenditure."

Personal Conflicts

The artist and her family have personally disagreed with the state authorities over its increasingly stringent regulations on animal husbandry. A few years ago, Sara's brother embarked on a series of unsuccessful legal cases over the mandatory slaughter of his animals, ostensibly to stop excessive feeding. As a show of solidarity, Sara created a multi-year series of pieces titled Pile O'Sápmi comprising a huge curtain of four hundred reindeer skulls, which was displayed at the 2017 art exhibition Documenta 14 and later obtained by the national institution, where it is displayed in the entryway.

Art as Awareness

For numerous Indigenous people, art appears the exclusive domain in which they can be understood by people of other nations. In 2022, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|