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Attendees to the renowned gallery are familiar to unusual encounters in its expansive Turbine Hall. They've basked under an simulated sun, glided down amusement rides, and observed AI-powered jellyfish drifting through the air. Yet this marks the inaugural time they will be venturing themselves in the complex nose passages of a reindeer. The latest artist commission for this huge space—created by Indigenous Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—welcomes patrons into a maze-like construction modeled after the expanded inside of a reindeer's nose passages. Upon entering, they can meander around or unwind on reindeer hides, listening on earphones to tribal seniors sharing narratives and knowledge.

Focus on the Nasal Passages

What's the focus on the nose? It might seem whimsical, but the exhibit pays tribute to a obscure biological feat: experts have discovered that in a fraction of a second, the reindeer's nose can warm the surrounding air it takes in by eighty degrees, helping the creature to endure in harsh Arctic conditions. Enlarging the nose to larger than human size, Sara notes, "generates a feeling of insignificance that you as a human being are not in control over nature." The artist is a former reporter, writer for kids, and environmental activist, who is from a reindeer-herding family in the far north of Norway. "Possibly that fosters the potential to change your perspective or trigger some modesty," she adds.

An Homage to Traditional Ways

The labyrinthine design is one of several features in Sara's engaging exhibition honoring the heritage, science, and beliefs of the Sámi, Europe's only Indigenous people. Partially migratory, the Sámi total about 100,000 people ranged across northern Norway, Finland, Sweden, and the Russian Arctic (an region they call Sápmi). They've experienced oppression, integration policies, and repression of their language by all four nations. Through highlighting the reindeer, an creature at the core of the Sámi belief system and creation story, the work also spotlights the people's issues relating to the environmental emergency, land dispossession, and colonialism.

Meaning in Elements

On the long entry slope, there's a towering, 26-metre sculpture of skins trapped by electrical wires. It represents a symbol for the political and economic systems restricting the Sámi. Like an electrical tower, part spiritual ascent, this component of the installation, titled Goavve-, points to the Sámi word for an harsh environmental condition, in which dense sheets of ice appear as fluctuating temperatures liquefy and refreeze the snow, locking in the reindeers' main cold-season sustenance, fungus. This phenomenon is a result of global heating, which is occurring up to four times faster in the Polar region than globally.

Previously, I visited Sara in Guovdageaidnu during a severe cold period and joined Sámi reindeer keepers on their motorized sleds in freezing temperatures as they hauled trailers of supplementary feed on to the wind-scoured tundra to distribute by hand. The herd gathered round us, scratching the frozen ground in futility for vegetative pieces. This expensive and labour-intensive process is having a drastic influence on herding practices—and on the animals' natural survival. However the other option is starvation. As these icy periods become commonplace, reindeer are succumbing—a number from lack of food, others drowning after falling into lakes and rivers through prematurely melting ice. In a sense, the work is a tribute to them. "With the layering of materials, in a way I'm transporting the goavvi to London," says Sara.

Opposing Perspectives

The installation also highlights the clear divergence between the industrial understanding of electricity as a asset to be exploited for economic benefit and livelihood and the Sámi outlook of energy as an inherent essence in animals, individuals, and nature. The gallery's history as a industrial facility is tied up in this, as is what the Sámi see as eco-imperialism by Nordic countries. As they strive to be standard bearers for renewable energy, Nordic nations have disagreed with the Sámi over the building of windfarms, water power facilities, and digging operations on their ancestral land; the Sámi contend their human rights, livelihoods, and traditions are endangered. "It's hard being such a limited population to defend yourself when the justifications are rooted in environmental protection," Sara comments. "Mining practices has appropriated the rhetoric of environmentalism, but still it's just aiming to find better ways to continue habits of use."

Personal Conflicts

She and her relatives have personally disagreed with the Norwegian government over its ever-stricter rules on herding. A few years ago, Sara's brother embarked on a sequence of ultimately unsuccessful court actions over the required reduction of his animals, apparently to stop overgrazing. As a show of solidarity, Sara created a four-year series of pieces named Pile O'Sápmi comprising a huge screen of 400 cranial remains, which was displayed at the the art exhibition Documenta 14 and later obtained by the national institution, where it hangs in the entryway.

Art as Activism

For many Sámi, visual expression 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|