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Visitors to the renowned gallery are used to surprising displays in its spacious Turbine Hall. They have sunbathed under an man-made sun, descended down helter skelters, and observed robotic jellyfish drifting through the air. However this marks the inaugural time they will be engaging themselves in the detailed nasal passages of a reindeer. The latest creative installation for this cavernous space—designed by Native Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—invites visitors into a labyrinthine construction inspired by the expanded inside of a reindeer's nose airways. Upon entering, they can meander around or chill out on skins, tuning in on headphones to Sámi elders imparting narratives and knowledge.

The Significance of the Nose

Why choose the nasal structure? It may appear playful, but the exhibit honors a obscure natural marvel: researchers have uncovered that in under a second, the reindeer's nose can heat the incoming air it inhales by eighty degrees, helping the animal to endure in extreme Arctic climates. Enlarging the nose to human-scale dimensions, Sara explains, "generates a perception of insignificance that you as a person are not in control over nature." Sara is a former reporter, young adult author, and rights advocate, who comes from a reindeer-herding family in the Norwegian Arctic. "Maybe that creates the chance to shift your outlook or evoke some humbleness," she adds.

A Tribute to Traditional Ways

The labyrinthine design is one of several features in Sara's immersive exhibition showcasing the culture, understanding, and philosophy of the Sámi, the sole native group in Europe. Semi-nomadic, the Sámi count about 100,000 people distributed across the Norwegian north, Finland, Sweden, and the Kola region (an region they call Sápmi). They have faced oppression, cultural suppression, and eradication of their dialect by all four countries. By focusing on the reindeer, an animal at the center of the Sámi cosmology and origin tale, the work also draws attention to the community's issues associated with the environmental emergency, land dispossession, and colonialism.

Symbolism in Elements

Along the lengthy entry incline, there's a soaring, eighty-five-foot sculpture of skins trapped by power and light cables. It can be read as a metaphor for the political and economic systems constraining the Sámi. Like an electrical tower, part heavenly staircase, this part of the installation, called Goavve-, relates to the Sámi name for an extreme weather phenomenon, wherein thick layers of ice develop as fluctuating weather melt and refreeze the snow, trapping the reindeers' primary cold-season nourishment, fungus. This phenomenon is a outcome of climate change, which is happening up to much more rapidly in the Far North than in other regions.

Three years ago, I visited Sara in the Norwegian far north during a goavvi winter and joined Sámi pastoralists on their motorized sleds in freezing temperatures as they transported containers of food pellets on to the barren Arctic plains to dispense through labor. These animals gathered round us, pawing the slippery ground in vain for mossy bits. This expensive and demanding method is having a severe effect on animal rearing—and on the animals' independence. But the choice is malnutrition. As these icy periods become routine, reindeer are succumbing—some from starvation, others drowning after falling into water bodies through prematurely melting ice. On one level, the installation is a memorial to them. "With the layering of materials, in a way I'm bringing the condition to London," says Sara.

Opposing Worldviews

The sculpture also emphasizes the clear divergence between the western view of energy as a asset to be harnessed for profit and survival and the Sámi worldview of energy as an innate life force in animals, humans, and the environment. Tate Modern's legacy as a industrial facility is tied up in this, as is what the Sámi view as environmental exploitation by regional governments. In their efforts to be leaders for renewable energy, Nordic nations have locked horns with the Sámi over the development of turbine fields, water power facilities, and mines on their native soil; the Sámi argue their legal protections, livelihoods, and way of life are threatened. "It's very difficult being such a limited population to stand your ground when the reasons are grounded in global sustainability," Sara comments. "Resource exploitation has adopted the language of ecology, but nonetheless it's just attempting to find better ways to maintain practices of consumption."

Personal Conflicts

She and her family have themselves clashed with the state authorities over its increasingly stringent regulations on herding. A few years ago, Sara's sibling undertook a set of ultimately unsuccessful legal cases over the forced culling of his herd, ostensibly to stop vegetation depletion. In support, Sara created a four-year collection of creations titled Pile O'Sápmi comprising a colossal drape of four hundred cranial remains, which was exhibited at the 2017 show Documenta 14 and later purchased by the public gallery, where it is displayed in the lobby.

Creative Expression as Awareness

For many Sámi, visual expression seems the exclusive sphere in which they can be listened to by people of other nations. Recently, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|