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Guests to the renowned gallery are accustomed to surprising experiences in its vast Turbine Hall. They've relaxed under an artificial sun, slid down spiral slides, and observed automated sea creatures drifting through the air. However this marks the first time they will be venturing themselves in the complex nasal chambers of a reindeer. The current artistic project for this huge space—designed by Indigenous Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—welcomes patrons into a winding structure inspired by the expanded interior of a reindeer's nose passages. Inside, they can wander around or chill out on pelts, listening on earphones to community leaders imparting tales and insights.

Why the Nose?

Why the nose? It could sound quirky, but the installation honors a little-known natural marvel: researchers have uncovered that in under a second, the reindeer's nose can heat the surrounding air it takes in by eighty degrees, helping the creature to thrive in inhospitable Arctic conditions. Enlarging the nose to human-scale dimensions, Sara says, "creates a perception of smallness that you as a person are not superior over nature." The artist is a ex- journalist, writer for kids, and environmental activist, who comes from a reindeer-herding family in the far north of Norway. "Perhaps that generates the chance to shift your perspective or trigger some modesty," she continues.

A Celebration to Sámi Culture

The labyrinthine structure is part of a features in Sara's absorbing art project honoring the heritage, knowledge, and beliefs of the Sámi, Europe's only Indigenous people. Traditionally mobile, the Sámi number approximately 100,000 people distributed across the Norwegian north, the Finnish Arctic, the Swedish Lapland, and the Kola region (an region they call Sápmi). They have experienced discrimination, integration policies, and suppression of their language by all four countries. With an emphasis on the reindeer, an animal at the core of the Sámi belief system and origin tale, the art also highlights the group's struggles relating to the environmental emergency, loss of territory, and imperialism.

Meaning in Materials

At the lengthy entry ramp, there's a looming, 26-meter structure of pelts entangled by power and light cables. It represents a metaphor for the societal frameworks limiting the Sámi. Like an electrical tower, part heavenly staircase, this component of the exhibit, named Goavve-, refers to the Sámi word for an severe climatic event, in which thick sheets of ice develop as changing conditions liquefy and refreeze the snow, locking in the reindeers' primary cold-season sustenance, lichen. Goavvi is a result of climate change, which is taking place up to four times faster in the Far North than globally.

Three years ago, I traveled to see Sara in a remote town during a icy season and went with Sámi herders on their snowmobiles in biting cold as they carried containers of supplementary feed on to the wind-scoured tundra to dispense manually. These animals gathered round us, digging the slippery ground in vain attempts for vegetative pieces. This costly and laborious procedure is having a drastic impact on herding practices—and on the animals' independence. But the other option is death. As goavvi winters become commonplace, reindeer are succumbing—some from hunger, others submerging after plunging into lakes and rivers through unstable frozen surfaces. On one level, the installation is a memorial to them. "With the layering of materials, in a way I'm introducing the condition to London," says Sara.

Diverging Worldviews

The sculpture also highlights the clear difference between the modern view of power as a resource to be utilized for economic benefit and livelihood and the Sámi worldview of life force as an inherent essence in creatures, people, and the environment. The gallery's past as a fossil fuel plant is linked with this, as is what the Sámi consider eco-imperialism by regional governments. As they strive to be leaders for clean sources, Scandinavian countries have disagreed with the Sámi over the construction of turbine fields, hydroelectric dams, and extraction sites on their ancestral land; the Sámi assert their human rights, incomes, and culture are endangered. "It's very difficult being such a tiny group to stand your ground when the arguments are grounded in environmental protection," Sara notes. "Mining practices has adopted the discourse of sustainability, but yet it's just striving to find better ways to continue practices of expenditure."

Individual Conflicts

She and her kin have themselves conflicted with the Norwegian government over its tightening policies on animal husbandry. Previously, Sara's brother initiated a sequence of finally failed lawsuits over the forced culling of his herd, apparently to stop excessive feeding. As a show of solidarity, Sara produced a four-year series of artworks named Pile O'Sápmi featuring a colossal drape of numerous reindeer skulls, which was displayed at the 2017 art exhibition Documenta 14 and later obtained by the national institution, where it resides in the lobby.

Creative Expression as Awareness

Among the community, art appears the only sphere in which they can be heard by the global community. In 2022, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|