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Attendees to the renowned gallery are familiar to unexpected experiences in its expansive Turbine Hall. They have sunbathed under an simulated sun, descended down spiral slides, and seen AI-powered sea creatures floating through the air. Yet this marks the initial time they will be venturing themselves in the detailed nasal chambers of a reindeer. The newest artist commission for this cavernous space—developed by Indigenous Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—welcomes patrons into a labyrinthine construction modeled after the expanded inside of a reindeer's nasal cavities. Upon entering, they can wander around or relax on skins, tuning in on earphones to tribal seniors telling narratives and knowledge.

Focus on the Nasal Passages

Why choose the nasal structure? It might seem playful, but the exhibit pays tribute to a obscure natural marvel: scientists have uncovered that in a fraction of a second, the reindeer's nose can heat the incoming air it breathes in by 80°C, allowing the animal to endure in inhospitable Arctic climates. Scaling the nose to bigger than a person, Sara notes, "produces a feeling of insignificance that you as a individual are not superior over nature." Sara is a former reporter, children's author, and rights advocate, who hails from a herding family in the Norwegian Arctic. "Possibly that fosters the chance to change your perspective or evoke some humbleness," she adds.

A Tribute to Indigenous Heritage

The labyrinthine design is part of a elements in Sara's engaging exhibition celebrating the culture, science, and beliefs of the Sámi, Europe's only Indigenous people. Traditionally mobile, the Sámi number about 100,000 people spread across the Norwegian north, Finland, Sweden, and the Kola region (an territory they call Sápmi). They have endured 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 mythology and creation story, the installation also highlights the people's challenges associated with the global warming, land dispossession, and external control.

Meaning in Components

Along the lengthy entrance slope, there's a soaring, 26-meter structure of skins trapped by power and light cables. It serves as a metaphor for the societal frameworks constraining the Sámi. Partly a utility pole, part celestial ladder, this component of the installation, titled Goavve-, points to the Sámi name for an severe climatic event, wherein solid sheets of ice form as varying weather liquefy and refreeze the snow, encasing the reindeers' key winter food, moss. Goavvi is a outcome of global heating, which is taking place up to four times faster in the Far North than elsewhere.

Three years ago, I traveled to see Sara in the Norwegian far north during a severe cold period and went with Sámi reindeer keepers on their motorized sleds in chilly conditions as they transported containers of food pellets on to the wind-scoured frozen landscape to distribute by hand. The herd gathered round us, digging the icy ground in futility for mossy bits. This resource-intensive and labour-intensive process is having a severe impact on reindeer husbandry—and on the animals' self-sufficiency. However the alternative is starvation. When such conditions become frequent, reindeer are dying—some from lack of food, others suffocating after falling into lakes and rivers through prematurely melting ice. In a sense, the work is a monument to them. "With the layering of materials, in a way I'm introducing the condition to London," says Sara.

Diverging Worldviews

This artwork also emphasizes the sharp difference between the modern understanding of power as a resource to be utilized for economic benefit and survival and the Sámi philosophy of energy as an innate power in creatures, individuals, and the environment. Tate Modern's history as a industrial facility is tied up in this, as is what the Sámi consider environmental exploitation by Scandinavian states. While attempting to be leaders for sustainable power, these states have clashed with the Sámi over the development of windfarms, river barriers, and digging operations on their traditional territory; the Sámi assert their legal protections, incomes, and traditions are threatened. "It's challenging being such a small minority to stand your ground when the reasons are based on global sustainability," Sara notes. "Resource exploitation has appropriated the language of environmentalism, but nonetheless it's just striving to find alternative ways to continue practices of expenditure."

Personal Struggles

The artist and her kin have personally disagreed with the Norwegian government over its tightening policies on reindeer management. In 2016, Sara's sibling undertook a set of finally failed legal cases over the forced culling of his herd, supposedly to stop overgrazing. To back him, Sara produced a four-year collection of creations titled Pile O'Sápmi including a massive drape of four hundred reindeer skulls, which was shown at the the art exhibition Documenta 14 and later obtained by the public gallery, where it is displayed in the lobby.

Art as Advocacy

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