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Attendees to the renowned gallery are familiar to surprising displays in its expansive Turbine Hall. They've relaxed under an simulated sun, descended down spiral slides, and seen robotic jellyfish hovering through the air. But this marks the inaugural time they will be immersing themselves in the complex nasal chambers of a reindeer. The newest creative installation for this cavernous space—designed by Native Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—encourages patrons into a maze-like construction inspired by the enlarged interior of a reindeer's nose passages. Inside, they can wander around or unwind on skins, tuning in on headphones to tribal seniors imparting stories and wisdom.

Why the Nose?

What's the focus on the nose? It could sound playful, but the exhibit pays tribute to a rarely recognized natural marvel: researchers have uncovered that in a fraction of a second, the reindeer's nose can raise the temperature of the ambient air it takes in by 80 degrees celsius, allowing the animal to thrive in extreme Arctic climates. Enlarging the nose to human-scale dimensions, Sara says, "produces a sense of insignificance that you as a human being are not superior over nature." Sara is a ex- writer, writer for kids, and land defender, who is from a pastoral family in the Norwegian Arctic. "Perhaps that generates the potential to alter your outlook or evoke some humbleness," she adds.

A Celebration to Indigenous Heritage

The maze-like design is part of a features in Sara's immersive exhibition showcasing the traditions, knowledge, and worldview of the Sámi, Europe's only Indigenous people. Traditionally mobile, the Sámi total about 100,000 people spread across the Norwegian north, Finland, Sweden, and the Russian Arctic (an region they call Sápmi). They've endured discrimination, cultural suppression, and suppression of their language by all four states. By focusing on the reindeer, an animal at the center of the Sámi mythology and creation story, the work also highlights the group's challenges connected to the global warming, property rights, and external control.

Metaphor in Materials

On the lengthy entrance ramp, there's a looming, eighty-five-foot sculpture of skins trapped by electrical wires. It serves as a analogy for the governance and financial structures limiting the Sámi. Like an electrical tower, part spiritual ascent, this component of the exhibit, titled Goavve-, refers to the Sámi term for an extreme weather phenomenon, wherein solid sheets of ice form as fluctuating conditions melt and ice over the snow, locking in the reindeers' main cold-season food, lichen. Goavvi is a consequence of global heating, which is occurring up to much more rapidly in the Far North than globally.

A few years back, I met with Sara in the Norwegian far north during a goavvi winter and accompanied Sámi reindeer keepers on their snowmobiles in biting cold as they transported containers of supplementary feed on to the barren tundra to dispense by hand. The herd surrounded round us, digging the frozen ground in vain attempts for mossy morsels. This costly and labour-intensive process is having a severe effect on reindeer husbandry—and on the animals' natural survival. But the alternative is starvation. When such conditions become frequent, reindeer are dying—a number from lack of food, others submerging after plunging into water bodies through unstable frozen surfaces. On one level, the installation is a tribute to them. "By overlapping of elements, in a way I'm introducing the phenomenon to London," says Sara.

Contrasting Belief Systems

The sculpture also highlights the stark difference between the western understanding of energy as a asset to be utilized for profit and existence and the Sámi outlook of vitality as an natural essence in animals, humans, and land. Tate Modern's legacy as a industrial facility is linked with this, as is what the Sámi consider environmental exploitation by regional governments. While attempting to be standard bearers for clean sources, Nordic nations have locked horns with the Sámi over the building of turbine fields, water power facilities, and extraction sites on their traditional territory; the Sámi argue their legal protections, ways of life, and culture are at risk. "It's challenging being such a tiny group to defend yourself when the arguments are rooted in global sustainability," Sara notes. "Resource exploitation has appropriated the rhetoric of environmentalism, but nonetheless it's just aiming to find alternative ways to continue practices of consumption."

Personal Conflicts

She and her relatives have themselves clashed with the Norwegian government over its increasingly stringent rules on reindeer management. A few years ago, Sara's sibling undertook a set of unsuccessful court actions over the mandatory slaughter of his herd, apparently to stop overgrazing. To back him, Sara produced a extended collection of pieces titled Pile O'Sápmi including a massive curtain of 400 reindeer skulls, which was exhibited at the the show Documenta 14 and later acquired by the National Museum of Oslo, where it hangs in the entryway.

Creative Expression as Advocacy

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