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Guests to the renowned gallery are familiar to unusual experiences in its expansive Turbine Hall. They have sunbathed under an man-made sun, slid down spiral slides, and observed robotic sea creatures drifting through the air. However this marks the inaugural time they will be venturing themselves in the intricate nasal cavities of a reindeer. The newest creative installation for this huge space—developed by Indigenous Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—invites patrons into a maze-like design based on the enlarged interior of a reindeer's nose cavities. Once inside, they can meander around or unwind on pelts, tuning in on headphones to community leaders imparting stories and insights.

The Significance of the Nose

Why choose the nasal structure? It may sound quirky, but the exhibit pays tribute to a obscure natural marvel: researchers have discovered that in less than one second, the reindeer's nose can raise the temperature of the ambient air it inhales by 80°C, helping the animal to survive in inhospitable Arctic conditions. Scaling the nose to bigger than a person, Sara says, "produces a feeling of smallness that you as a human being are not in control over nature." She is a ex- reporter, young adult author, and land defender, who is from a pastoral family in northern Norway. "Perhaps that generates the possibility to change your perspective or evoke some modesty," she continues.

An Homage to Sámi Culture

The maze-like design is part of a components in Sara's immersive exhibition showcasing the traditions, knowledge, and philosophy of the Sámi, Europe's only Indigenous people. Partially migratory, the Sámi total roughly 100,000 people spread across northern Norway, the Finnish Arctic, the Swedish Lapland, and the Russian Arctic (an region they call Sápmi). They've faced persecution, integration policies, and repression of their language by all four states. By focusing on the reindeer, an creature at the heart of the Sámi mythology and creation story, the art also draws attention to the people's challenges relating to the global warming, loss of territory, and imperialism.

Metaphor in Elements

Along the long access slope, there's a looming, 26-meter sculpture of reindeer hides entangled by utility lines. It serves as a symbol for the governance and financial structures constraining the Sámi. Like an electrical tower, part spiritual ascent, this part of the artwork, named Goavve-, refers to the Sámi name for an severe climatic event, in which dense sheets of ice develop as changing weather liquefy and ice over the snow, locking in the reindeers' key winter food, moss. Goavvi is a outcome of planetary warming, which is happening up to four times faster in the Polar region than elsewhere.

Previously, I met with Sara in a remote town during a severe cold period and went with Sámi pastoralists on their snowmobiles in biting cold as they carried containers of animal nutrition on to the wind-scoured tundra to dispense through labor. These animals surrounded round us, pawing the icy ground in vain for vegetative pieces. This resource-intensive and demanding method is having a severe impact on reindeer husbandry—and on the animals' independence. But the alternative is starvation. When such conditions become frequent, reindeer are dying—some from hunger, others submerging after sinking in streams through thinning ice sheets. In a sense, the art is a tribute to them. "Through the stacking of materials, in a way I'm transporting the condition to London," says Sara.

Contrasting Worldviews

This artwork also highlights the sharp contrast between the industrial understanding of power as a commodity to be utilized for gain and existence and the Sámi worldview of energy as an innate life force in animals, individuals, and nature. The gallery's legacy as a industrial facility is tied up in this, as is what the Sámi see as environmental exploitation by regional governments. As they strive to be leaders for renewable energy, Scandinavian countries have clashed with the Sámi over the building of windfarms, hydroelectric dams, and mines on their ancestral land; the Sámi assert their human rights, ways of life, and traditions are threatened. "It's hard being such a tiny group to stand your ground when the arguments are based on environmental protection," Sara comments. "Mining practices has adopted the discourse of ecology, but yet it's just aiming to find more suitable ways to continue patterns of consumption."

Personal Challenges

Sara and her relatives have personally clashed with the Norwegian government over its ever-stricter regulations on herding. In 2016, Sara's sibling initiated a sequence of unsuccessful lawsuits over the forced culling of his animals, supposedly to stop vegetation depletion. As a show of solidarity, Sara created a extended series of creations called Pile O'Sápmi comprising a huge screen of 400 cranial remains, which was exhibited at the the art exhibition Documenta 14 and later obtained by the national institution, where it resides in the lobby.

Art as Activism

For numerous Indigenous people, art is the only sphere in which they can be listened to by outsiders. Recently, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|