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Visitors to the renowned gallery are accustomed to unusual displays in its vast Turbine Hall. They've relaxed under an artificial sun, slid down amusement rides, and seen robotic jellyfish hovering through the air. But this marks the inaugural time they will be immersing themselves in the intricate nasal passages of a reindeer. The latest artist commission for this immense space—developed by Indigenous Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—welcomes patrons into a winding structure modeled after the enlarged inside of a reindeer's nose airways. Inside, they can meander around or chill out on skins, tuning in on earphones to community leaders telling tales and insights.

The Significance of the Nose

What's the focus on the nose? It may seem quirky, but the artwork pays tribute to a rarely recognized scientific wonder: scientists have discovered that in less than one second, the reindeer's nose can warm the incoming air it breathes in by 80°C, allowing the animal to survive in extreme Arctic temperatures. Expanding the nose to larger than human size, Sara says, "generates a feeling of inferiority that you as a person are not superior over nature." The artist is a ex- reporter, young adult author, and environmental activist, who hails from a reindeer-herding family in the far north of Norway. "Maybe that generates the potential to alter your perspective or spark some humbleness," she adds.

An Homage to Indigenous Heritage

The winding structure is among various elements in Sara's engaging art project celebrating the heritage, understanding, and philosophy of the Sámi, the continent's original inhabitants. Partially migratory, the Sámi number approximately 100,000 people ranged across northern Norway, the Finnish Arctic, the Swedish Lapland, and the Russian Arctic (an region they call Sápmi). They have faced persecution, cultural suppression, and eradication of their tongue by all four states. Through highlighting the reindeer, an animal at the core of the Sámi cosmology and founding narrative, the installation also draws attention to the community's challenges associated with the climate crisis, land dispossession, and imperialism.

Metaphor in Materials

Along the long entrance slope, there's a towering, 26-metre formation of pelts entangled by power and light cables. It can be read as a metaphor for the political and economic systems restricting the Sámi. Part pylon, part heavenly staircase, this part of the installation, titled Goavve-, refers to the Sámi term for an extreme weather phenomenon, whereby thick sheets of ice appear as changing conditions thaw and solidify again the snow, encasing the reindeers' key cold-season nourishment, fungus. This phenomenon is a result of climate change, which is occurring up to much more rapidly in the Polar region than in other regions.

A few years back, 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 hauled carts of food pellets on to the wind-scoured frozen landscape to dispense by hand. The herd surrounded round us, pawing the icy ground in vain for lichen-covered morsels. This resource-intensive and laborious process is having a drastic impact on reindeer husbandry—and on the animals' self-sufficiency. Yet the other option is death. As goavvi winters become commonplace, reindeer are dying—some from starvation, others suffocating after plunging into streams through prematurely melting ice. On one level, the installation is a tribute to them. "By overlapping of components, in a way I'm transporting the condition to London," says Sara.

Diverging Perspectives

This artwork also emphasizes the clear divergence between the western view of energy as a commodity to be exploited for gain and survival and the Sámi outlook of vitality as an innate essence in animals, humans, and nature. This venue's history as a coal and oil power station is tied up in this, as is what the Sámi view as eco-imperialism by regional governments. While attempting to be leaders for renewable energy, these states have clashed with the Sámi over the construction of wind energy projects, river barriers, and extraction sites on their ancestral land; the Sámi assert their human rights, incomes, and culture are endangered. "It's very difficult being such a tiny group to stand your ground when the justifications are rooted in environmental protection," Sara comments. "Resource exploitation has appropriated the rhetoric of environmentalism, but still it's just striving to find more suitable ways to persist in habits of use."

Family Challenges

The artist and her family have personally disagreed with the national administration over its increasingly stringent regulations on herding. In 2016, Sara's sibling embarked on a set of finally failed legal cases over the required reduction of his herd, ostensibly to stop vegetation depletion. To back him, Sara created a extended set of pieces called Pile O'Sápmi featuring a massive curtain of 400 animal bones, which was exhibited at the the art exhibition Documenta 14 and later purchased by the public gallery, where it resides in the entrance.

Art as Activism

For numerous Indigenous people, art is the only sphere in which they can be understood by outsiders. In 2022, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|