Máret Ánne Sara’s new installation at Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall aims to express the Sámi people’s deep connection with nature and their struggle for cultural survival. Yet, the work falls short of capturing the emotional and visual power the venue demands. The Turbine Hall is known for its scale. It has hosted some of the most ambitious installations in modern art, from a blazing artificial sun to monumental cracks running through the floor. Against this dramatic history, Sara’s creation of wooden spirals and reindeer bones feels quiet, even hesitant. From above, her spiralling wooden fences look delicate and small, nearly disappearing in the enormous space. When visitors enter the maze-like structure, they find neatly cut wooden poles, lightly bound and carefully arranged. But the sense of scale, immersion, or surprise—so central to Turbine Hall commissions—is missing. Sara, an artist of Sámi heritage from northern Norway, is known for using natural materials such as bones, hides, and wood to explore the spiritual and ecological realities of her people. Her previous works, featuring reindeer skulls and hides, offered striking visual metaphors for the Sámi’s close ties to the land and the reindeer that sustain them. Here, however, the message feels diluted. In one section of the hall, reindeer hides rise in a vertical column, framed by chains and white neon light. The composition is sleek and minimal, but also strangely sterile. The hides look polished and clean, resembling rugs more than ritual symbols. Instead of evoking raw nature or the hardship of life in the Arctic, the piece feels decorative—an aesthetic gesture rather than an emotional or political one. The central maze of wooden poles includes displays of reindeer skulls and bones arranged with precision. The effect is tidy, even polite. It lacks the visceral shock one might expect from such materials. Visitors can sit on reindeer-hide-covered seats and listen to audio recordings about Arctic life and climate change. The stories describe hunting and slaughter, yet the experience remains distant. The audio could easily be heard elsewhere, making the installation feel less like an immersive artwork and more like a quiet museum exhibit. Sara’s installation raises questions about what it means to bring the Arctic to London. Perhaps the artist wants to resist turning her culture into spectacle. Yet by retreating from the hall’s power, the work loses intensity and presence. The vast industrial interior overwhelms her modest wooden forms. Instead of filling the space with emotion or movement, the installation seems to shrink within it. There is a missed opportunity here. Sámi art can be vivid, mystical, and full of resistance. It can challenge the viewer to confront the damage done to Indigenous lands and the lessons they hold for a warming planet. Sara’s work, though thoughtful in concept, lacks the force to make these ideas felt. The Turbine Hall invites confrontation—it asks artists to respond boldly to its size and energy. Sara’s reluctance to engage with it feels like a refusal to communicate on that level. Art has the power to make distant realities tangible, to pull the viewer into another world. But this installation prefers to tell rather than show, to explain rather than reveal. Still, Sara’s presence at Tate Modern is significant. It signals greater recognition for Sámi artists and Indigenous voices in contemporary art. Her themes—ecology, identity, and resilience—are vital and deserve this platform. Yet the presentation undercuts their strength. In a space built for grandeur, her quiet resistance reads more as hesitation than critique. The Turbine Hall has seen artists transform its enormity into awe. Sara’s installation, with its soft tones and gentle gestures, instead highlights the challenge of scale itself. The result feels more like a whisper than a statement—a work that speaks softly of deep truths but risks being lost in the echo of the hall.