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Guests to the renowned gallery are accustomed to unexpected experiences in its spacious Turbine Hall. They've sunbathed under an simulated sun, glided down amusement rides, and seen automated jellyfish hovering through the air. But this marks the first time they will be immersing themselves in the complex nasal cavities of a reindeer. The current artist commission for this cavernous space—developed by Indigenous Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—welcomes visitors into a maze-like design modeled after the expanded inside of a reindeer's nose passages. Once inside, they can wander around or unwind on skins, listening on headphones to tribal seniors sharing tales and insights.

The Significance of the Nose

Why choose the nasal structure? It may appear playful, but the exhibit celebrates a obscure biological feat: experts have discovered that in less than one second, the reindeer's nose can raise the temperature of the ambient air it takes in by 80°C, allowing the animal to endure in inhospitable Arctic temperatures. Expanding the nose to larger than human size, Sara notes, "produces a sense of insignificance that you as a human being are not dominant over nature." She is a former journalist, young adult author, and rights advocate, who hails from a pastoral family in northern Norway. "Possibly that creates the chance to change your perspective or evoke some humility," she adds.

An Homage to Sámi Culture

The maze-like structure is among various features in Sara's absorbing art project celebrating the culture, knowledge, and philosophy of the Sámi, Europe's only Indigenous people. Partially migratory, the Sámi number about 100,000 people distributed across northern Norway, the Finnish Arctic, the Swedish Lapland, and the Kola region (an region they call Sápmi). They've endured oppression, integration policies, and suppression of their tongue by all four nations. Through highlighting the reindeer, an animal at the heart of the Sámi belief system and founding narrative, the work also highlights the community's challenges relating to the global warming, loss of territory, and external control.

Meaning in Elements

Along the extended entry slope, there's a looming, eighty-five-foot formation of pelts trapped by power and light cables. It serves as a symbol for the governance and financial structures restricting the Sámi. Like an electrical tower, part heavenly staircase, this section of the installation, called Goavve-, points to the Sámi name for an severe climatic event, whereby solid sheets of ice appear as fluctuating conditions melt and solidify again the snow, encasing the reindeers' main cold-season nourishment, moss. This phenomenon is a consequence of global heating, which is happening up to at an accelerated rate in the Polar region than globally.

A few years back, I visited Sara in Guovdageaidnu during a severe cold period and went with Sámi reindeer keepers on their motorized sleds in chilly conditions as they transported containers of animal nutrition on to the wind-scoured frozen landscape to distribute manually. The reindeer surrounded round us, digging the slippery ground in futility for vegetative morsels. This expensive and laborious procedure is having a drastic effect on animal rearing—and on the animals' natural survival. But the other option is death. When such conditions become frequent, reindeer are succumbing—a number from hunger, others suffocating after plunging into water bodies through thinning ice sheets. To some extent, the installation is a monument to them. "Through the stacking of elements, in a way I'm bringing the phenomenon to London," says Sara.

Contrasting Belief Systems

This artwork also underscores the stark divergence between the western interpretation of energy as a commodity to be utilized for economic benefit and existence and the Sámi outlook of life force as an innate power in animals, humans, and land. This venue's history as a industrial facility is tied up in this, as is what the Sámi see as environmental exploitation by Scandinavian states. As they strive to be exemplars for sustainable power, these states have clashed with the Sámi over the building of turbine fields, river barriers, and mines on their native soil; the Sámi argue their legal protections, incomes, and way of life are endangered. "It's very difficult being such a small minority to protect your rights when the justifications are rooted in environmental protection," Sara notes. "Mining practices has co-opted the discourse of environmentalism, but nonetheless it's just attempting to find better ways to continue practices of expenditure."

Personal Conflicts

She and her kin have themselves conflicted with the state authorities over its increasingly stringent rules on reindeer management. A few years ago, Sara's brother embarked on a series of unsuccessful court actions over the mandatory slaughter of his animals, supposedly to stop excessive feeding. In support, Sara created a extended collection of artworks called Pile O'Sápmi featuring a huge drape of 400 animal bones, which was shown at the 2017's show Documenta 14 and later purchased by the national institution, where it is displayed in the entryway.

Art as Advocacy

Among the community, visual expression seems the only sphere in which they can be understood by the global community. In 2022, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|