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Attendees to the renowned gallery are familiar to unusual experiences in its expansive Turbine Hall. They've relaxed under an artificial sun, glided down spiral slides, and witnessed automated sea creatures hovering through the air. Yet this marks the initial time they will be venturing themselves in the complex nasal cavities of a reindeer. The current creative installation for this cavernous space—designed by Native Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—encourages gallerygoers into a winding structure inspired by the enlarged interior of a reindeer's nose cavities. Upon entering, they can stroll around or chill out on skins, tuning in on headphones to Sámi elders sharing stories and knowledge.

The Significance of the Nose

Why the nose? It may sound playful, but the exhibit honors a obscure biological feat: experts have uncovered that in under a second, the reindeer's nose can heat the incoming air it takes in by eighty degrees, allowing the creature to endure in harsh Arctic conditions. Enlarging the nose to larger than human size, Sara says, "produces a feeling of smallness that you as a individual are not superior over nature." She is a former writer, children's author, and rights advocate, who comes from a herding family in northern Norway. "Maybe that generates the possibility to shift your perspective or evoke some humility," she continues.

An Homage to Indigenous Heritage

The maze-like structure is part of a elements in Sara's immersive commission celebrating the culture, science, and beliefs of the Sámi, Europe's only Indigenous people. Partially migratory, the Sámi number roughly 100,000 people ranged across northern Norway, the Finnish Arctic, Sweden, and the Kola region (an territory they call Sápmi). They have experienced oppression, forced assimilation, and repression of their dialect by all four nations. By focusing on the reindeer, an animal at the core of the Sámi cosmology and origin tale, the art also highlights the community's struggles associated with the environmental emergency, property rights, and imperialism.

Metaphor in Materials

On the long access ramp, there's a soaring, 26-metre structure of reindeer hides trapped by electrical wires. It represents a symbol for the governance and financial structures constraining the Sámi. Part pylon, part celestial ladder, this section of the exhibit, called Goavve-, relates to the Sámi term for an harsh environmental condition, wherein thick coatings of ice form as varying weather melt and ice over the snow, locking in the reindeers' key cold-season food, fungus. Goavvi is a result of global heating, which is occurring up to at an accelerated rate in the Polar region than in other regions.

Previously, I traveled to see Sara in a remote town during a icy season and joined Sámi herders on their Arctic vehicles in biting cold as they transported containers of animal nutrition on to the barren Arctic plains to distribute through labor. The reindeer crowded round us, digging the slippery ground in futility for mossy morsels. This expensive and demanding process is having a significant impact on reindeer husbandry—and on the animals' independence. Yet the alternative is starvation. When such conditions become commonplace, reindeer are dying—a number from lack of food, others submerging after falling into water bodies through thinning ice sheets. In a sense, the art is a monument to them. "With the layering of components, in a way I'm transporting the goavvi to London," says Sara.

Diverging Worldviews

This artwork also emphasizes the clear contrast between the modern view of energy as a resource to be harnessed for economic benefit and livelihood and the Sámi outlook of energy as an inherent power in animals, humans, and the environment. 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 Scandinavian states. In their efforts to be standard bearers for sustainable power, Nordic nations have locked horns with the Sámi over the construction of wind energy projects, water power facilities, and digging operations on their native soil; the Sámi argue their human rights, ways of life, and traditions are at risk. "It's hard being such a limited population to stand your ground when the justifications are grounded in environmental protection," Sara observes. "Mining practices has adopted the language of sustainability, but nonetheless it's just aiming to find more suitable ways to maintain patterns of consumption."

Personal Challenges

The artist and her relatives have personally conflicted with the state authorities over its increasingly stringent policies on herding. Previously, Sara's brother undertook a series of ultimately unsuccessful legal cases over the mandatory slaughter of his livestock, apparently to stop vegetation depletion. To back him, Sara developed a multi-year collection of pieces titled Pile O'Sápmi comprising a massive screen of 400 cranial remains, which was exhibited at the 2017 art exhibition Documenta 14 and later obtained by the public gallery, where it resides in the entryway.

Creative Expression as Advocacy

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