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Attendees to the renowned gallery are accustomed to unexpected encounters in its spacious Turbine Hall. They've basked under an man-made sun, descended down amusement rides, and seen AI-powered jellyfish hovering through the air. However this marks the inaugural time they will be engaging themselves in the complex nose chambers of a reindeer. The current artistic project for this immense space—created by Native Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—invites patrons into a maze-like structure based on the enlarged inside of a reindeer's nose cavities. Inside, they can meander around or relax on skins, listening on earphones to tribal seniors telling narratives and wisdom.

Why the Nose?

What's the focus on the nose? It might seem quirky, but the artwork celebrates a obscure biological feat: scientists have discovered that in under a second, the reindeer's nose can warm the ambient air it inhales by 80°C, enabling the animal to survive in extreme Arctic climates. Expanding the nose to larger than human size, Sara says, "produces a sense of smallness that you as a human being are not superior over nature." Sara is a former journalist, young adult author, and environmental activist, who comes from a herding family in the Norwegian Arctic. "Perhaps that creates the possibility to alter your viewpoint or evoke some humility," she states.

An Homage to Indigenous Heritage

The labyrinthine design is among various components in Sara's absorbing exhibition showcasing the traditions, understanding, and worldview of the Sámi, the sole native group in Europe. Semi-nomadic, the Sámi count approximately 100,000 people spread across northern Norway, Finland, Sweden, and Russia's Kola Peninsula (an region they call Sápmi). They have endured persecution, forced assimilation, and suppression of their tongue by all four nations. With an emphasis on the reindeer, an creature at the center of the Sámi cosmology and founding narrative, the work also spotlights the group's issues associated with the environmental emergency, loss of territory, and imperialism.

Meaning in Materials

On the lengthy access incline, there's a soaring, eighty-five-foot formation of skins entangled by power and light cables. It serves as a symbol for the societal frameworks constraining the Sámi. Partly a utility pole, part celestial ladder, this part of the exhibit, named Goavve-, points to the Sámi term for an harsh environmental condition, wherein solid coatings of ice form as fluctuating weather thaw and ice over the snow, encasing the reindeers' primary cold-season nourishment, moss. Goavvi is a outcome of global heating, which is happening up to four times faster in the Arctic than globally.

Previously, I met with Sara in Guovdageaidnu during a goavvi winter and accompanied Sámi herders on their motorized sleds in biting cold as they hauled containers of food pellets on to the wind-scoured Arctic plains to provide by hand. These animals surrounded round us, digging the frozen ground in vain for mossy pieces. This costly and labour-intensive process is having a significant effect on reindeer husbandry—and on the animals' natural survival. But the alternative is starvation. As these icy periods become frequent, reindeer are perishing—a number from lack of food, others submerging after plunging into streams through unstable frozen surfaces. To some extent, the installation is a memorial to them. "By overlapping of components, in a way I'm transporting the condition to London," says Sara.

Contrasting Worldviews

The installation also emphasizes the sharp contrast between the industrial view of electricity as a asset to be utilized for gain and survival and the Sámi philosophy of life force as an inherent essence in creatures, humans, and nature. Tate Modern's past as a industrial facility is connected to this, as is what the Sámi consider eco-imperialism by Scandinavian states. As they strive to be exemplars for sustainable power, Scandinavian countries have clashed with the Sámi over the building of turbine fields, water power facilities, and mines on their traditional territory; the Sámi assert their fundamental freedoms, incomes, and culture are at risk. "It's very difficult being such a limited population to stand your ground when the reasons are grounded in saving the world," Sara comments. "Mining practices has appropriated the language of sustainability, but nonetheless it's just aiming to find better ways to persist in practices of expenditure."

Personal Challenges

She and her family have personally disagreed with the national administration over its increasingly stringent rules on reindeer management. In 2016, Sara's sibling undertook a set of finally failed lawsuits over the forced culling of his livestock, apparently to stop vegetation depletion. To back him, Sara created a multi-year series of pieces titled Pile O'Sápmi featuring a massive drape of four hundred cranial remains, which was shown at the 2017's show Documenta 14 and later obtained by the national institution, where it resides in the entrance.

The Role of Art in Awareness

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