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Attendees to the renowned gallery are used to surprising experiences in its spacious Turbine Hall. They've sunbathed under an man-made sun, glided down helter skelters, and witnessed robotic sea creatures floating through the air. However this marks the initial time they will be engaging themselves in the detailed nose chambers of a reindeer. The latest creative installation for this huge space—developed by Indigenous Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—encourages visitors into a maze-like structure based on the scaled-up inside of a reindeer's nose airways. Once inside, they can meander around or chill out on skins, tuning in on headphones to tribal seniors telling tales and insights.

Why the Nose?

What's the focus on the nose? It might appear playful, but the exhibit pays tribute to a rarely recognized biological feat: researchers have discovered that in under a second, the reindeer's nose can heat the incoming air it breathes in by 80 degrees celsius, allowing the animal to survive in inhospitable Arctic climates. Enlarging the nose to bigger than a person, Sara says, "generates a perception of inferiority that you as a person are not in control over nature." Sara is a former reporter, young adult author, and rights advocate, who hails from a reindeer-herding family in northern Norway. "Possibly that fosters the chance to shift your viewpoint or spark some humbleness," she adds.

An Homage to Sámi Culture

The winding structure is one of several elements in Sara's engaging exhibition showcasing the heritage, knowledge, and worldview of the Sámi, the continent's original inhabitants. Partially migratory, the Sámi total about 100,000 people distributed across northern Norway, the Finnish Arctic, the Swedish Lapland, and the Kola region (an territory they call Sápmi). They have faced discrimination, cultural suppression, and suppression of their language by all four states. With an emphasis on the reindeer, an creature at the heart of the Sámi belief system and creation story, the work also spotlights the group's struggles relating to the environmental emergency, property rights, and external control.

Symbolism in Components

Along the lengthy access ramp, there's a looming, eighty-five-foot structure of reindeer hides ensnared by electrical wires. It serves as a symbol for the governance and financial structures constraining the Sámi. Like an electrical tower, part spiritual ascent, this component of the artwork, called Goavve-, relates to the Sámi name for an extreme weather phenomenon, whereby thick coatings of ice form as changing conditions thaw and ice over the snow, locking in the reindeers' main cold-season sustenance, moss. Goavvi is a consequence of global heating, which is taking place up to four times faster in the Arctic than in other regions.

A few years back, I met with Sara in a remote town during a goavvi winter and accompanied Sámi pastoralists on their Arctic vehicles in chilly conditions as they hauled trailers of supplementary feed on to the wind-scoured frozen landscape to provide through labor. These animals crowded round us, scratching the slippery ground in vain attempts for vegetative pieces. This resource-intensive and labour-intensive procedure is having a severe influence on animal rearing—and on the animals' self-sufficiency. Yet the other option is malnutrition. As goavvi winters become routine, reindeer are succumbing—some from hunger, others suffocating after sinking in streams through prematurely melting ice. To some extent, the installation is a monument to them. "By overlapping of elements, in a way I'm bringing the condition to London," says Sara.

Opposing Perspectives

The installation also highlights the stark divergence between the western understanding of energy as a commodity to be utilized for economic benefit and existence and the Sámi worldview of energy as an natural essence in creatures, people, and the environment. Tate Modern's history as a industrial facility is connected to this, as is what the Sámi view as environmental exploitation by regional governments. In their efforts to be standard bearers for clean sources, Scandinavian countries have disagreed with the Sámi over the construction of wind energy projects, river barriers, and digging operations on their native soil; the Sámi assert their fundamental freedoms, livelihoods, and way of life are endangered. "It's challenging being such a small minority to defend yourself when the reasons are based on global sustainability," Sara notes. "Mining practices has adopted the language of ecology, but nonetheless it's just attempting to find better ways to persist in patterns of expenditure."

Personal Challenges

The artist and her relatives have personally conflicted with the state authorities over its tightening policies on reindeer management. Previously, Sara's sibling initiated a sequence of finally failed court actions over the required reduction of his animals, apparently to stop overgrazing. In support, Sara created a four-year collection of pieces named Pile O'Sápmi featuring a huge drape of numerous cranial remains, which was displayed at the 2017 show Documenta 14 and later purchased by the national institution, where it hangs in the entryway.

The Role of Art in Awareness

Among the community, art seems the sole realm in which they can be heard by the global community. In 2022, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|