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Attendees to the renowned gallery are accustomed to unexpected displays in its spacious Turbine Hall. They have basked under an man-made sun, descended down spiral slides, and seen automated sea creatures floating through the air. Yet this marks the initial time they will be engaging themselves in the intricate nose cavities of a reindeer. The latest artist commission for this immense space—created by Native Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—welcomes patrons into a maze-like structure based on the scaled-up inside of a reindeer's nose airways. Upon entering, they can meander around or unwind on skins, tuning in on headphones to community leaders sharing tales and wisdom.

Why the Nose?

What's the focus on the nose? It may seem whimsical, but the exhibit pays tribute to a little-known natural marvel: researchers have uncovered that in a fraction of a second, the reindeer's nose can raise the temperature of the surrounding air it inhales by eighty degrees, allowing the creature to survive in inhospitable Arctic climates. Expanding the nose to larger than human size, Sara says, "generates a feeling of inferiority that you as a person are not in control over nature." The artist is a ex- journalist, young adult author, and rights advocate, who comes from a reindeer-herding family in the far north of Norway. "Perhaps that creates the potential to shift your perspective or spark some humbleness," she adds.

A Tribute to Indigenous Heritage

The labyrinthine installation is part of a components in Sara's engaging art project showcasing the traditions, understanding, and beliefs of the Sámi, the continent's original inhabitants. Semi-nomadic, the Sámi total roughly 100,000 people ranged across northern Norway, the Finnish Arctic, Sweden, and the Russian Arctic (an area they call Sápmi). They've experienced discrimination, cultural suppression, and eradication of their dialect by all four countries. By focusing on the reindeer, an animal at the core of the Sámi cosmology and origin tale, the installation also highlights the community's issues relating to the environmental emergency, property rights, and colonialism.

Metaphor in Elements

Along the lengthy entry incline, there's a looming, eighty-five-foot sculpture of skins entangled by utility lines. It represents a symbol for the political and economic systems restricting the Sámi. Partly a utility pole, part spiritual ascent, this component of the installation, named Goavve-, points to the Sámi term for an severe climatic event, wherein dense sheets of ice appear as fluctuating weather liquefy and solidify again the snow, trapping the reindeers' key winter sustenance, lichen. This phenomenon is a outcome of climate change, which is happening up to much more rapidly in the Polar region than globally.

Three years ago, I traveled to see Sara in Guovdageaidnu during a icy season and went with Sámi pastoralists on their snowmobiles in chilly conditions as they hauled trailers of animal nutrition on to the barren frozen landscape to provide through labor. The herd surrounded round us, scratching the frozen ground in vain for lichen-covered morsels. This costly and laborious process is having a drastic effect on reindeer husbandry—and on the animals' natural survival. Yet the other option is death. As goavvi winters become frequent, reindeer are succumbing—a number from hunger, others submerging after falling into water bodies through unstable frozen surfaces. On one level, the art is a tribute to them. "By overlapping of materials, in a way I'm transporting the condition to London," says Sara.

Contrasting Worldviews

This artwork also emphasizes the clear contrast between the industrial view of power as a commodity to be utilized for economic benefit and livelihood and the Sámi philosophy of life force as an innate life force in animals, people, and nature. Tate Modern's legacy as a fossil fuel plant is linked with this, as is what the Sámi consider environmental exploitation by regional governments. In their efforts to be exemplars for sustainable power, Scandinavian countries have clashed with the Sámi over the building of turbine fields, water power facilities, and extraction sites on their ancestral land; the Sámi argue their fundamental freedoms, livelihoods, and culture are at risk. "It's very difficult being such a tiny group to protect your rights when the justifications are grounded in global sustainability," Sara notes. "Mining practices has appropriated the language of sustainability, but yet it's just attempting to find better ways to persist in patterns of use."

Personal Challenges

The artist and her relatives have themselves clashed with the national administration over its ever-stricter policies on animal husbandry. Previously, Sara's sibling embarked on a set of finally failed lawsuits over the required reduction of his herd, ostensibly to stop excessive feeding. As a show of solidarity, Sara created a four-year collection of pieces called Pile O'Sápmi including a huge screen of numerous animal bones, which was exhibited at the 2017's event Documenta 14 and later acquired by the National Museum of Oslo, where it resides in the lobby.

Creative Expression as Advocacy

For numerous Indigenous people, creative work is 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|