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Guests to the renowned gallery are used to surprising encounters in its spacious Turbine Hall. They have relaxed under an simulated sun, slid down amusement rides, and witnessed automated sea creatures drifting through the air. However this marks the first time they will be immersing themselves in the detailed nasal cavities of a reindeer. The current creative installation for this cavernous space—developed by Indigenous Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—invites gallerygoers into a winding design based on the enlarged inside of a reindeer's nose cavities. Inside, they can stroll around or chill out on skins, listening on earphones to Sámi elders imparting stories and knowledge.

Why the Nose?

What's the focus on the nose? It may sound whimsical, but the exhibit pays tribute to a little-known biological feat: experts have found that in under a second, the reindeer's nose can warm the incoming air it breathes in by 80 degrees celsius, enabling the animal to survive in inhospitable Arctic temperatures. Expanding the nose to bigger than a person, Sara says, "creates a feeling of insignificance that you as a human being are not dominant over nature." She is a former writer, writer for kids, and rights advocate, who is from a reindeer-herding family in the far north of Norway. "Possibly that generates the possibility to alter your outlook or spark some humbleness," she states.

A Celebration to Traditional Ways

The maze-like installation is among various features in Sara's absorbing exhibition honoring the culture, science, and beliefs of the Sámi, Europe's only Indigenous people. Partially migratory, the Sámi number roughly 100,000 people distributed across northern Norway, the Finnish Arctic, the Swedish Lapland, and Russia's Kola Peninsula (an area they call Sápmi). They've faced oppression, forced assimilation, and suppression of their language by all four states. With an emphasis on the reindeer, an animal at the heart of the Sámi cosmology and origin tale, the work also highlights the people's challenges connected to the global warming, land dispossession, and imperialism.

Metaphor in Materials

On the long entry incline, there's a looming, 26-metre sculpture of skins trapped by power and light cables. It represents a metaphor for the societal frameworks constraining the Sámi. Part pylon, part heavenly staircase, this component of the exhibit, titled Goavve-, relates to the Sámi term for an severe climatic event, in which dense sheets of ice appear as fluctuating temperatures melt and solidify again the snow, trapping the reindeers' main cold-season nourishment, lichen. This phenomenon is a consequence of global heating, which is occurring up to much more rapidly in the Arctic than elsewhere.

Previously, I met with Sara in Guovdageaidnu during a goavvi winter and accompanied Sámi reindeer keepers on their motorized sleds in biting cold as they transported containers of animal nutrition on to the wind-scoured tundra to provide by hand. The herd gathered round us, digging the icy ground in futility for vegetative bits. This costly and laborious method is having a drastic influence on reindeer husbandry—and on the animals' natural survival. However the choice is malnutrition. When such conditions become frequent, reindeer are perishing—a number from lack of food, others submerging after sinking in lakes and rivers through thinning ice sheets. To some extent, the installation is a tribute to them. "With the layering of elements, in a way I'm introducing the goavvi to London," says Sara.

Diverging Worldviews

The sculpture also underscores the sharp difference between the western view of power as a asset to be exploited for profit and livelihood and the Sámi philosophy of life force as an natural essence in animals, individuals, and the environment. Tate Modern's past as a coal and oil power station is tied up in this, as is what the Sámi see as eco-imperialism by Scandinavian states. While attempting to be exemplars for renewable energy, Scandinavian countries have disagreed with the Sámi over the construction of turbine fields, water power facilities, and digging operations on their traditional territory; the Sámi argue their legal protections, ways of life, and culture are threatened. "It's hard being such a small minority to protect your rights when the arguments are based on global sustainability," Sara observes. "Resource exploitation has adopted the rhetoric of environmentalism, but nonetheless it's just striving to find alternative ways to maintain patterns of expenditure."

Family Conflicts

Sara and her relatives have themselves clashed with the state authorities over its increasingly stringent regulations on animal husbandry. Previously, Sara's sibling initiated a sequence of unsuccessful legal cases over the required reduction of his livestock, apparently to stop vegetation depletion. As a show of solidarity, Sara created a extended series of creations called Pile O'Sápmi including a huge curtain of numerous reindeer skulls, which was displayed at the 2017's show Documenta 14 and later obtained by the National Museum of Oslo, where it hangs in the entryway.

Art as Advocacy

For numerous Indigenous people, creative work is the sole realm in which they can be heard by people of other nations. Two years ago, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|