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Attendees to the renowned gallery are accustomed to unusual experiences in its vast Turbine Hall. They've basked under an artificial sun, glided down amusement rides, and observed robotic jellyfish drifting through the air. Yet this marks the first time they will be engaging themselves in the detailed nose chambers of a reindeer. The newest creative installation for this cavernous space—created by Indigenous Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—welcomes gallerygoers into a winding construction inspired by the scaled-up interior of a reindeer's nose passages. Inside, they can meander around or relax on skins, tuning in on earphones to community leaders sharing narratives and wisdom.

The Significance of the Nose

What's the focus on the nose? It may seem quirky, but the artwork honors a little-known biological feat: experts 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 survive in extreme Arctic climates. Expanding the nose to bigger than a person, Sara explains, "creates a sense of smallness that you as a individual are not in control over nature." She is a ex- writer, children's author, and land defender, who hails from a herding family in the Norwegian Arctic. "Perhaps that generates the possibility to change your outlook or evoke some modesty," she adds.

A Tribute to Traditional Ways

The maze-like installation is one of several features in Sara's immersive commission showcasing the culture, understanding, and philosophy of the Sámi, Europe's only Indigenous people. Traditionally mobile, the Sámi total roughly 100,000 people spread across northern Norway, Finland, the Swedish Lapland, and the Kola region (an region they call Sápmi). They've faced oppression, cultural suppression, and suppression of their tongue by all four nations. Through highlighting the reindeer, an creature at the heart of the Sámi cosmology and origin tale, the installation also spotlights the community's issues relating to the global warming, property rights, and imperialism.

Metaphor in Components

On the lengthy entry slope, there's a looming, 26-meter sculpture of skins ensnared by electrical wires. It represents a analogy for the political and economic systems constraining the Sámi. Part pylon, part spiritual ascent, this section of the installation, called Goavve-, points to the Sámi word for an severe climatic event, whereby solid sheets of ice develop as changing temperatures melt and ice over the snow, encasing the reindeers' primary cold-season sustenance, fungus. The condition is a consequence of climate change, which is occurring up to much more rapidly in the Polar region than globally.

Three years ago, I traveled to see Sara in Guovdageaidnu during a severe cold period and accompanied Sámi herders on their motorized sleds in chilly conditions as they carried carts of animal nutrition on to the wind-scoured tundra to provide by hand. The reindeer surrounded round us, pawing the icy ground in futility for lichen-covered pieces. This expensive and demanding procedure is having a severe influence on animal rearing—and on the animals' natural survival. But the choice is starvation. When such conditions become frequent, reindeer are dying—a number from hunger, others drowning after falling into lakes and rivers through prematurely melting ice. To some extent, the work is a tribute to them. "Through the stacking of elements, in a way I'm introducing the condition to London," says Sara.

Diverging Perspectives

The sculpture also emphasizes the sharp difference between the western interpretation of power as a resource to be harnessed for economic benefit and existence and the Sámi philosophy of life force as an natural essence in creatures, people, and land. The gallery's past as a industrial facility is tied up in this, as is what the Sámi view as eco-imperialism by Scandinavian states. While attempting to be standard bearers for clean sources, Nordic nations have disagreed with the Sámi over the development of turbine fields, water power facilities, and extraction sites on their native soil; the Sámi contend their legal protections, livelihoods, and traditions are at risk. "It's very difficult being such a small minority to protect your rights when the justifications are grounded in global sustainability," Sara notes. "Extractivism has appropriated the language of ecology, but yet it's just striving to find alternative ways to continue practices of use."

Individual Challenges

The artist and her family have themselves disagreed with the Norwegian government over its increasingly stringent regulations on herding. A few years ago, Sara's sibling initiated a set of finally failed court actions over the required reduction of his herd, ostensibly to stop vegetation depletion. In support, Sara developed a multi-year series of artworks titled Pile O'Sápmi including a massive curtain of 400 reindeer skulls, which was displayed at the the event Documenta 14 and later purchased by the national institution, where it resides in the entrance.

Creative Expression as Activism

For numerous Indigenous people, visual expression appears the only sphere in which they can be listened to by outsiders. In 2022, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|