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Attendees to the renowned gallery are used to unexpected displays in its vast Turbine Hall. They have sunbathed under an simulated sun, glided down amusement rides, and seen AI-powered jellyfish hovering through the air. Yet this marks the first time they will be engaging themselves in the complex nose chambers of a reindeer. The current creative installation for this cavernous space—created by Native Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—invites gallerygoers into a labyrinthine structure based on the enlarged interior of a reindeer's nasal cavities. Once inside, they can stroll around or relax on pelts, tuning in on earphones to community leaders imparting narratives and knowledge.

Focus on the Nasal Passages

Why the nose? It might seem playful, but the artwork celebrates a rarely recognized natural marvel: researchers have found that in under a second, the reindeer's nose can warm the incoming air it takes in by 80 degrees celsius, helping the animal to endure in inhospitable Arctic conditions. Expanding the nose to larger than human size, Sara notes, "creates a perception of smallness that you as a person are not dominant over nature." Sara is a ex- writer, writer for kids, and rights advocate, who is from a pastoral family in the Norwegian Arctic. "Possibly that fosters the potential to shift your outlook or evoke some modesty," she adds.

A Tribute to Indigenous Heritage

The maze-like installation is among various components in Sara's absorbing commission honoring the culture, knowledge, and beliefs of the Sámi, the continent's original inhabitants. Semi-nomadic, the Sámi count roughly 100,000 people distributed across northern Norway, the Finnish Arctic, the Swedish Lapland, and the Kola region (an territory they call Sápmi). They have faced discrimination, forced assimilation, and suppression of their language by all four nations. Through highlighting the reindeer, an animal at the core of the Sámi mythology and creation story, the work also draws attention to the people's challenges connected to the climate crisis, land dispossession, and imperialism.

Meaning in Materials

At the extended entry slope, there's a looming, eighty-five-foot sculpture of pelts ensnared by power and light cables. It serves as a metaphor for the governance and financial structures restricting the Sámi. Like an electrical tower, part heavenly staircase, this section of the artwork, titled Goavve-, relates to the Sámi word for an extreme weather phenomenon, wherein thick coatings of ice appear as changing temperatures melt and refreeze the snow, encasing the reindeers' primary cold-season sustenance, lichen. Goavvi is a outcome of climate change, which is happening up to four times faster in the Polar region than in other regions.

Previously, I visited Sara in the Norwegian far north during a severe cold period and joined Sámi reindeer keepers on their Arctic vehicles in biting cold as they carried containers of food pellets on to the barren Arctic plains to dispense through labor. The herd gathered round us, pawing the slippery ground in vain attempts for vegetative morsels. This costly and demanding procedure is having a drastic impact on herding practices—and on the animals' independence. Yet the alternative is death. As goavvi winters become frequent, reindeer are succumbing—a number from hunger, others suffocating after plunging into lakes and rivers through prematurely melting ice. On one level, the installation is a memorial to them. "With the layering of elements, in a way I'm transporting the condition to London," says Sara.

Diverging Perspectives

The sculpture also underscores the clear contrast between the industrial interpretation of electricity as a resource to be exploited for profit and existence and the Sámi worldview of vitality as an innate life force in animals, humans, and land. This venue's legacy as a fossil fuel plant is linked with this, as is what the Sámi view as environmental exploitation by Nordic countries. While attempting to be exemplars for sustainable power, Nordic nations have disagreed with the Sámi over the construction of turbine fields, river barriers, and extraction sites on their native soil; the Sámi argue their fundamental freedoms, incomes, and traditions are threatened. "It's very difficult being such a limited population to protect your rights when the justifications are rooted in global sustainability," Sara comments. "Resource exploitation has adopted the language of sustainability, but yet it's just attempting to find alternative ways to persist in habits of consumption."

Family Conflicts

She and her kin have personally conflicted with the state authorities over its tightening policies on animal husbandry. Previously, Sara's sibling initiated a series of finally failed court actions over the mandatory slaughter of his livestock, supposedly to stop vegetation depletion. To back him, Sara developed a four-year series of creations titled Pile O'Sápmi including a huge curtain of numerous animal bones, which was displayed at the 2017 art exhibition Documenta 14 and later purchased by the public gallery, where it resides in the entryway.

The Role of Art in Activism

For many Sámi, creative work appears the exclusive domain in which they can be listened to by the global community. Recently, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|