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Visitors to the renowned gallery are accustomed to surprising displays in its spacious Turbine Hall. They've sunbathed under an man-made sun, descended down helter skelters, and observed AI-powered jellyfish drifting through the air. However this marks the initial time they will be engaging themselves in the complex nasal cavities of a reindeer. The newest creative installation for this immense space—created by Native Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—invites visitors into a winding structure based on the enlarged interior of a reindeer's nasal airways. Upon entering, they can wander around or chill out on skins, listening on earphones to tribal seniors telling tales and insights.

Focus on the Nasal Passages

What's the focus on the nose? It might seem quirky, but the installation honors a little-known natural marvel: experts have discovered that in a fraction of a second, the reindeer's nose can heat the ambient air it breathes in by eighty degrees, allowing the creature to endure in harsh Arctic climates. Enlarging the nose to human-scale dimensions, Sara notes, "produces a sense of inferiority that you as a person are not superior over nature." The artist is a ex- writer, young adult author, and environmental activist, who comes from a pastoral family in northern Norway. "Maybe that fosters the possibility to alter your outlook or evoke some humbleness," she states.

A Celebration to Indigenous Heritage

The winding design is part of a features in Sara's absorbing art project honoring the culture, knowledge, and philosophy of the Sámi, Europe's only Indigenous people. Partially migratory, the Sámi count about 100,000 people distributed across northern Norway, Finland, the Swedish Lapland, and the Kola region (an territory they call Sápmi). They have faced oppression, integration policies, and suppression of their language by all four countries. By focusing on the reindeer, an creature at the heart of the Sámi cosmology and founding narrative, the art also highlights the people's challenges associated with the climate crisis, loss of territory, and external control.

Meaning in Materials

Along the extended access incline, there's a towering, 26-meter sculpture of pelts trapped by power and light cables. It can be read as a metaphor for the societal frameworks constraining the Sámi. Like an electrical tower, part celestial ladder, this section of the exhibit, titled Goavve-, relates to the Sámi word for an harsh environmental condition, whereby dense sheets of ice appear as varying temperatures melt and ice over the snow, trapping the reindeers' key cold-season nourishment, lichen. Goavvi is a consequence of planetary warming, which is occurring up to four times faster in the Polar region than globally.

Three years ago, I visited Sara in Guovdageaidnu during a goavvi winter and accompanied Sámi herders on their Arctic vehicles in freezing temperatures as they hauled containers of supplementary feed on to the wind-scoured Arctic plains to provide by hand. The herd surrounded round us, digging the icy ground in futility for vegetative pieces. This expensive and demanding method is having a drastic effect on reindeer husbandry—and on the animals' natural survival. However the alternative is death. As goavvi winters become routine, reindeer are succumbing—some from hunger, others drowning after falling into water bodies through unstable frozen surfaces. On one level, the installation is a tribute to them. "Through the stacking of elements, in a way I'm introducing the goavvi to London," says Sara.

Opposing Worldviews

The installation also emphasizes the stark difference between the industrial interpretation of power as a commodity to be exploited for gain and livelihood and the Sámi outlook of energy as an natural essence in animals, people, and land. This venue's past 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 leaders for renewable energy, Scandinavian countries have disagreed with the Sámi over the development of turbine fields, hydroelectric dams, and digging operations on their ancestral land; the Sámi contend their legal protections, incomes, and culture are threatened. "It's very difficult being such a tiny group to protect your rights when the justifications are based on environmental protection," Sara observes. "Resource exploitation has appropriated the language of ecology, but still it's just striving to find better ways to maintain patterns of consumption."

Individual Struggles

The artist and her kin have personally conflicted with the national administration over its ever-stricter policies on reindeer management. In 2016, Sara's sibling initiated a series of ultimately unsuccessful lawsuits over the mandatory slaughter of his animals, ostensibly to stop overgrazing. In support, Sara developed a multi-year collection of creations titled Pile O'Sápmi featuring a colossal drape of 400 reindeer skulls, which was shown at the the event Documenta 14 and later acquired by the public gallery, where it is displayed in the entrance.

Art as Advocacy

Among the community, art seems the exclusive sphere in which they can be listened to by outsiders. Recently, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|