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Guests to the renowned gallery are accustomed to unexpected displays in its expansive Turbine Hall. They have sunbathed under an artificial sun, glided down spiral slides, and witnessed robotic sea creatures drifting through the air. Yet this marks the initial time they will be immersing themselves in the intricate nose chambers of a reindeer. The latest artist commission for this immense space—developed by Native Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—invites gallerygoers into a labyrinthine structure based on the enlarged interior of a reindeer's nose airways. Once inside, they can meander around or relax on skins, listening on earphones to community leaders sharing tales and insights.

Focus on the Nasal Passages

Why choose the nasal structure? It might sound whimsical, but the installation celebrates a little-known natural marvel: experts have uncovered that in a fraction of a second, the reindeer's nose can raise the temperature of the surrounding air it takes in by 80 degrees celsius, allowing the creature to endure in extreme 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 ex- journalist, writer for kids, and rights advocate, who hails from a reindeer-herding family in northern Norway. "Maybe that creates the possibility to shift your perspective or trigger some modesty," she states.

An Homage to Sámi Culture

The maze-like design is part of a elements in Sara's absorbing commission showcasing the culture, knowledge, and worldview of the Sámi, Europe's only Indigenous people. Partially migratory, the Sámi number approximately 100,000 people ranged across the Norwegian north, Finland, the Swedish Lapland, and the Kola region (an territory they call Sápmi). They have experienced persecution, cultural suppression, and eradication of their language by all four states. By focusing on the reindeer, an animal at the heart of the Sámi cosmology and founding narrative, the work also highlights the group's challenges relating to the environmental emergency, loss of territory, and colonialism.

Symbolism in Materials

On the long entry slope, there's a towering, 26-metre structure of reindeer hides ensnared by power and light cables. It represents a symbol for the governance and financial structures constraining the Sámi. Part pylon, part celestial ladder, this component of the artwork, called Goavve-, points to the Sámi name for an severe climatic event, wherein dense sheets of ice appear as fluctuating temperatures liquefy and refreeze the snow, encasing the reindeers' key cold-season sustenance, moss. This phenomenon is a outcome of global heating, which is happening up to at an accelerated rate in the Arctic than in other regions.

A few years back, I traveled to see Sara in a remote town during a goavvi winter and went with Sámi herders on their snowmobiles in freezing temperatures as they transported carts of animal nutrition on to the barren tundra to provide manually. The herd surrounded round us, scratching the slippery ground in futility for vegetative morsels. This expensive and labour-intensive procedure is having a significant impact on herding practices—and on the animals' natural survival. But the alternative is malnutrition. When such conditions become frequent, reindeer are dying—a number from lack of food, others drowning after plunging into lakes and rivers through unstable frozen surfaces. To some extent, the art is a tribute to them. "By overlapping of materials, in a way I'm introducing the goavvi to London," says Sara.

Contrasting Worldviews

The sculpture also emphasizes the clear difference between the western understanding of electricity as a commodity to be utilized for profit and survival and the Sámi philosophy of energy as an natural power in animals, humans, and land. Tate Modern's history as a coal and oil power station is linked with this, as is what the Sámi see as green colonialism by regional governments. As they strive to be exemplars for clean sources, Scandinavian countries have clashed with the Sámi over the building of turbine fields, river barriers, and extraction sites on their traditional territory; the Sámi contend their human rights, livelihoods, and way of life are endangered. "It's challenging being such a limited population to protect your rights when the reasons are based on environmental protection," Sara observes. "Resource exploitation has adopted the discourse of ecology, but nonetheless it's just attempting to find more suitable ways to persist in practices of use."

Family Struggles

The artist and her kin have personally conflicted with the national administration over its increasingly stringent policies on herding. A few years ago, Sara's sibling initiated a set of ultimately unsuccessful legal cases over the required reduction of his animals, apparently to stop vegetation depletion. As a show of solidarity, Sara created a extended collection of creations called Pile O'Sápmi including a huge drape of four hundred animal bones, which was shown at the the event Documenta 14 and later obtained by the National Museum of Oslo, where it hangs in the entrance.

Art as Advocacy

For numerous Indigenous people, visual expression is the sole sphere in which they can be listened to by outsiders. In 2022, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|