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Attendees to the renowned gallery are used to unexpected displays in its expansive Turbine Hall. They have relaxed under an simulated sun, glided down spiral slides, and seen robotic jellyfish floating through the air. However this marks the inaugural time they will be engaging themselves in the intricate nose cavities of a reindeer. The latest artist commission for this cavernous space—developed by Native Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—invites visitors into a winding design inspired by the expanded inside of a reindeer's nasal airways. Once inside, they can wander around or relax on skins, tuning in on earphones to community leaders telling narratives and insights.

Why the Nose?

Why choose the nasal structure? It may sound whimsical, but the installation celebrates a rarely recognized scientific wonder: experts have discovered that in less than one second, the reindeer's nose can warm the ambient air it breathes in by eighty degrees, allowing the animal to endure in inhospitable Arctic conditions. Expanding the nose to larger than human size, Sara notes, "creates a feeling of smallness that you as a individual are not superior over nature." She is a former journalist, writer for kids, and land defender, who is from a reindeer-herding family in the far north of Norway. "Perhaps that creates the possibility to shift your outlook or evoke some humbleness," she states.

A Tribute to Traditional Ways

The labyrinthine design is part of a features in Sara's absorbing art project celebrating the heritage, knowledge, and philosophy of the Sámi, Europe's only Indigenous people. Semi-nomadic, the Sámi total roughly 100,000 people ranged across northern Norway, Finland, Sweden, and the Kola region (an region they call Sápmi). They have endured oppression, integration policies, and repression of their language by all four countries. With an emphasis on the reindeer, an animal at the core of the Sámi cosmology and origin tale, the work also draws attention to the community's issues connected to the global warming, land dispossession, and imperialism.

Meaning in Elements

Along the extended entry slope, there's a soaring, 26-meter sculpture of pelts trapped by utility lines. It represents a analogy for the societal frameworks restricting the Sámi. Partly a utility pole, part heavenly staircase, this section of the artwork, titled Goavve-, points to the Sámi name for an extreme weather phenomenon, whereby thick layers of ice appear as varying conditions liquefy and solidify again the snow, trapping the reindeers' key winter food, moss. Goavvi is a consequence of global heating, which is happening up to four times faster in the Polar region than elsewhere.

Three years ago, I visited Sara in Guovdageaidnu during a icy season and joined Sámi herders on their motorized sleds in biting cold as they carried carts of food pellets on to the exposed Arctic plains to dispense by hand. These animals crowded round us, scratching the frozen ground in vain attempts for lichen-covered pieces. This resource-intensive and labour-intensive process is having a drastic effect on herding practices—and on the animals' independence. Yet the other option is malnutrition. As goavvi winters become routine, reindeer are succumbing—some from lack of food, others submerging after sinking in streams through thinning ice sheets. On one level, the installation is a memorial to them. "Through the stacking of materials, in a way I'm bringing the goavvi to London," says Sara.

Contrasting Belief Systems

The installation also highlights the clear divergence between the modern understanding of energy as a commodity to be utilized for economic benefit and survival and the Sámi philosophy of energy as an innate power in animals, humans, and nature. This venue's past as a coal and oil power station is linked with this, as is what the Sámi consider environmental exploitation by Scandinavian states. While attempting to be exemplars for clean sources, Scandinavian countries have disagreed with the Sámi over the building of wind energy projects, hydroelectric dams, and extraction sites on their traditional territory; the Sámi contend their legal protections, ways of life, and way of life are threatened. "It's hard being such a tiny group to protect your rights when the justifications are grounded in global sustainability," Sara comments. "Mining practices has adopted the discourse of environmentalism, but still it's just attempting to find more suitable ways to maintain practices of expenditure."

Family Challenges

Sara and her family have personally disagreed with the Norwegian government over its tightening regulations on reindeer management. In 2016, Sara's sibling initiated a set of unsuccessful legal cases over the forced culling of his animals, supposedly to stop excessive feeding. In support, Sara developed a multi-year series of pieces named Pile O'Sápmi including a huge curtain of numerous reindeer skulls, which was displayed at the 2017 event Documenta 14 and later purchased by the National Museum of Oslo, where it is displayed in the entryway.

Art as Activism

For numerous Indigenous people, creative work appears the exclusive domain in which they can be listened to by people of other nations. Recently, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|