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Visitors to the renowned gallery are accustomed to unusual displays in its expansive Turbine Hall. They have basked under an man-made sun, descended down helter skelters, and seen robotic sea creatures floating through the air. But this marks the first time they will be immersing themselves in the complex nose passages of a reindeer. The current artist commission for this immense space—designed by Indigenous Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—invites visitors into a maze-like structure based on the expanded inside of a reindeer's nasal airways. Upon entering, they can stroll around or chill out on reindeer hides, listening on earphones to Sámi elders imparting tales and wisdom.

The Significance of the Nose

What's the focus on the nose? It could seem quirky, but the installation celebrates a obscure biological feat: researchers have discovered that in under a second, the reindeer's nose can heat the surrounding air it inhales by eighty degrees, helping the animal to thrive in harsh Arctic temperatures. Enlarging the nose to human-scale dimensions, Sara says, "generates a feeling of smallness that you as a human being are not superior over nature." She is a former reporter, young adult author, and environmental activist, who comes from a pastoral family in the far north of Norway. "Possibly that generates the possibility to alter your viewpoint or evoke some humility," she states.

A Tribute to Traditional Ways

The labyrinthine installation is among various components in Sara's engaging art project honoring the heritage, knowledge, and philosophy of the Sámi, the sole native group in Europe. Partially migratory, the Sámi total roughly 100,000 people spread across northern Norway, Finland, the Swedish Lapland, and the Russian Arctic (an area they call Sápmi). They have faced discrimination, integration policies, and eradication of their tongue by all four nations. With an emphasis on the reindeer, an animal at the core of the Sámi belief system and origin tale, the installation also spotlights the people's struggles associated with the environmental emergency, loss of territory, and colonialism.

Meaning in Elements

At the long entrance slope, there's a looming, eighty-five-foot formation of reindeer hides entangled by utility lines. It serves as a metaphor for the political and economic systems limiting the Sámi. Partly a utility pole, part heavenly staircase, this part of the exhibit, named Goavve-, points to the Sámi term for an severe climatic event, in which thick layers of ice form as fluctuating temperatures melt and ice over the snow, encasing the reindeers' main cold-season nourishment, moss. The condition is a result of climate change, which is happening up to four times faster in the Far North than elsewhere.

Previously, I visited Sara in Guovdageaidnu during a icy season and went with Sámi pastoralists on their motorized sleds in freezing temperatures as they transported containers of animal nutrition on to the barren frozen landscape to provide by hand. The reindeer gathered round us, digging the icy ground in vain attempts for mossy bits. This costly and laborious process is having a significant influence on animal rearing—and on the animals' self-sufficiency. But the other option is starvation. When such conditions become routine, reindeer are perishing—some from starvation, others drowning after falling into streams through thinning ice sheets. To some extent, the art is a memorial to them. "By overlapping of materials, in a way I'm bringing the phenomenon to London," says Sara.

Diverging Belief Systems

This artwork also underscores the sharp divergence between the industrial understanding of electricity as a asset to be utilized for gain and survival and the Sámi worldview of vitality as an natural power in animals, humans, and land. This venue's past as a industrial facility is tied up in this, as is what the Sámi consider eco-imperialism by Nordic countries. While attempting to be leaders for clean sources, Scandinavian countries have disagreed with the Sámi over the building of wind energy projects, hydroelectric dams, and extraction sites on their ancestral land; the Sámi assert their human rights, livelihoods, and culture are at risk. "It's challenging being such a tiny group to protect your rights when the arguments are grounded in global sustainability," Sara notes. "Resource exploitation has appropriated the language of sustainability, but yet it's just striving to find better ways to continue practices of expenditure."

Individual Challenges

She and her kin have themselves conflicted with the state authorities over its tightening policies on animal husbandry. Previously, Sara's brother initiated a sequence of ultimately unsuccessful court actions over the forced culling of his livestock, ostensibly to stop vegetation depletion. As a show of solidarity, Sara developed a four-year set of pieces named Pile O'Sápmi featuring a colossal screen of numerous reindeer skulls, which was exhibited at the the event Documenta 14 and later obtained by the national institution, where it resides in the lobby.

The Role of Art in Advocacy

For numerous Indigenous people, creative work appears the sole realm in which they can be heard by outsiders. In 2022, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|