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Attendees to the renowned gallery are used to unexpected encounters in its expansive Turbine Hall. They have sunbathed under an man-made sun, descended down spiral slides, and observed AI-powered jellyfish hovering through the air. But this marks the initial time they will be venturing themselves in the complex nose chambers of a reindeer. The latest artistic project for this huge space—created by Indigenous Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—welcomes gallerygoers into a maze-like construction inspired by the enlarged interior of a reindeer's nose passages. Once inside, they can stroll around or chill out on reindeer hides, tuning in on headphones to community leaders telling narratives and insights.

Why the Nose?

Why the nose? It could appear playful, but the exhibit celebrates a obscure scientific wonder: scientists have uncovered that in less than one second, the reindeer's nose can heat the ambient air it inhales by eighty degrees, allowing the creature to thrive in harsh Arctic climates. Scaling the nose to human-scale dimensions, Sara says, "creates a sense of insignificance that you as a individual are not superior over nature." She is a former reporter, young adult author, and environmental activist, who is from a pastoral family in northern Norway. "Possibly that fosters the possibility to shift your perspective or evoke some humility," she continues.

An Homage to Traditional Ways

The labyrinthine design is one of several components in Sara's immersive commission honoring the culture, science, and worldview of the Sámi, the continent's original inhabitants. Partially migratory, the Sámi number approximately 100,000 people distributed across northern Norway, the Finnish Arctic, Sweden, and the Kola region (an area they call Sápmi). They've endured persecution, integration policies, and eradication of their tongue by all four nations. Through highlighting the reindeer, an animal at the core of the Sámi cosmology and creation story, the work also highlights the people's issues connected to the environmental emergency, loss of territory, and external control.

Symbolism in Materials

At the extended entry slope, there's a towering, 26-meter sculpture of pelts entangled by electrical wires. It can be read as a analogy for the political and economic systems restricting the Sámi. Like an electrical tower, part heavenly staircase, this part of the installation, named Goavve-, relates to the Sámi word for an extreme weather phenomenon, wherein thick layers of ice form as fluctuating temperatures thaw and solidify again the snow, encasing the reindeers' key cold-season food, fungus. The condition is a outcome of climate change, which is occurring up to much more rapidly in the Arctic than globally.

Three years ago, I traveled to see Sara in the Norwegian far north during a icy season and went with Sámi pastoralists on their snowmobiles in chilly conditions as they carried trailers of food pellets on to the wind-scoured frozen landscape to distribute manually. The reindeer crowded round us, scratching the icy ground in futility for vegetative bits. This resource-intensive and laborious procedure is having a significant influence on animal rearing—and on the animals' independence. But the choice is malnutrition. When such conditions become commonplace, reindeer are perishing—a number from hunger, others suffocating after plunging into lakes and rivers through prematurely melting ice. In a sense, the installation is a tribute to them. "By overlapping of components, in a way I'm transporting the condition to London," says Sara.

Contrasting Belief Systems

This artwork also underscores the stark divergence between the industrial interpretation of energy as a commodity to be exploited for profit and livelihood and the Sámi philosophy of life force as an innate life force in animals, individuals, and nature. The gallery's past as a industrial facility is linked with this, as is what the Sámi view as green colonialism by regional governments. In their efforts to be standard bearers for renewable energy, Nordic nations have clashed with the Sámi over the development of wind energy projects, river barriers, and extraction sites on their traditional territory; the Sámi assert their human rights, ways of life, and culture are threatened. "It's hard being such a limited population to stand your ground when the arguments are based on saving the world," Sara comments. "Extractivism has co-opted the rhetoric of sustainability, but yet it's just attempting to find more suitable ways to persist in habits of use."

Personal Struggles

The artist and her family have themselves clashed with the state authorities over its ever-stricter regulations on reindeer management. A few years ago, Sara's brother undertook a set of ultimately unsuccessful legal cases over the forced culling of his herd, ostensibly to stop vegetation depletion. As a show of solidarity, Sara created a four-year set of pieces named Pile O'Sápmi including a huge curtain of four hundred reindeer skulls, which was shown at the 2017's art exhibition Documenta 14 and later acquired by the national institution, where it hangs in the entrance.

The Role of Art in Advocacy

Among the community, creative work seems the only domain in which they can be heard by the global community. In 2022, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|