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Attendees to the renowned gallery are familiar to surprising encounters in its expansive Turbine Hall. They've relaxed under an man-made sun, slid down helter skelters, and observed automated jellyfish floating through the air. Yet this marks the initial time they will be venturing themselves in the complex nasal passages of a reindeer. The current artistic project for this huge space—developed by Indigenous Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—welcomes patrons into a maze-like structure inspired by the expanded interior of a reindeer's nose cavities. Once inside, they can meander around or unwind on reindeer hides, listening on headphones to tribal seniors telling tales and knowledge.

Focus on the Nasal Passages

Why the nose? It could sound playful, but the installation honors a little-known biological feat: researchers have uncovered that in under a second, the reindeer's nose can raise the temperature of the incoming air it takes in by 80 degrees celsius, helping the animal to thrive in inhospitable Arctic temperatures. Scaling the nose to bigger than a person, Sara explains, "creates a perception of smallness that you as a person are not superior over nature." She is a former reporter, young adult author, and land defender, who hails from a pastoral family in northern Norway. "Perhaps that generates the potential to shift your outlook or trigger some humility," she states.

A Tribute to Indigenous Heritage

The winding structure is among various features in Sara's absorbing exhibition celebrating the culture, understanding, and beliefs of the Sámi, the sole native group in Europe. Semi-nomadic, the Sámi count approximately 100,000 people spread across northern Norway, Finland, the Swedish Lapland, and the Russian Arctic (an territory they call Sápmi). They've faced persecution, forced assimilation, and suppression of their tongue by all four states. Through highlighting the reindeer, an animal at the heart of the Sámi mythology and origin tale, the installation also draws attention to the people's issues associated with the climate crisis, property rights, and external control.

Meaning in Components

On the long access slope, there's a looming, eighty-five-foot sculpture of pelts ensnared by power and light cables. It serves as a analogy for the political and economic systems constraining the Sámi. Like an electrical tower, part heavenly staircase, this part of the exhibit, titled Goavve-, refers to the Sámi term for an harsh environmental condition, whereby dense sheets of ice appear as fluctuating weather liquefy and ice over the snow, encasing the reindeers' main winter nourishment, moss. This phenomenon is a outcome of climate change, which is happening up to four times faster in the Arctic than elsewhere.

A few years back, I traveled to see Sara in Guovdageaidnu during a severe cold period and joined Sámi reindeer keepers on their snowmobiles in biting cold as they hauled carts of supplementary feed on to the exposed Arctic plains to distribute by hand. The herd gathered round us, pawing the frozen ground in vain for vegetative pieces. This expensive and labour-intensive process is having a severe influence on animal rearing—and on the animals' independence. Yet the choice is malnutrition. As goavvi winters become frequent, reindeer are dying—some from lack of food, others suffocating after falling into water bodies through unstable frozen surfaces. On one level, the work is a monument to them. "With the layering of elements, in a way I'm introducing the goavvi to London," says Sara.

Opposing Perspectives

This artwork also underscores the sharp divergence between the modern view of energy as a asset to be exploited for profit and livelihood and the Sámi philosophy of vitality as an inherent life force in animals, individuals, and the environment. This venue's legacy as a fossil fuel plant is linked with this, as is what the Sámi view as eco-imperialism by Scandinavian states. In their efforts to be standard bearers for renewable energy, these states have clashed with the Sámi over the construction of wind energy projects, hydroelectric dams, and digging operations on their ancestral land; the Sámi assert their human rights, incomes, and culture are threatened. "It's challenging being such a limited population to protect your rights when the justifications are grounded in environmental protection," Sara observes. "Mining practices has appropriated the rhetoric of sustainability, but still it's just attempting to find alternative ways to persist in habits of expenditure."

Individual Challenges

The artist and her kin have themselves disagreed with the state authorities over its ever-stricter rules on herding. A few years ago, Sara's sibling initiated a set of ultimately unsuccessful legal cases over the mandatory slaughter of his herd, ostensibly to stop overgrazing. As a show of solidarity, Sara produced a multi-year set of creations called Pile O'Sápmi featuring a massive drape of numerous reindeer skulls, which was shown at the the show Documenta 14 and later purchased by the National Museum of Oslo, where it is displayed in the lobby.

Art as Activism

Among the community, creative work appears the exclusive domain in which they can be understood by the global community. Two years ago, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|