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Guests to the renowned gallery are familiar to unexpected displays in its expansive Turbine Hall. They have relaxed under an man-made sun, descended down spiral slides, and seen automated jellyfish drifting through the air. Yet this marks the first time they will be engaging themselves in the intricate nasal passages of a reindeer. The current artistic project for this cavernous space—designed by Indigenous Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—encourages patrons into a winding design based on the expanded interior of a reindeer's nose cavities. Upon entering, they can wander around or chill out on skins, listening on headphones to tribal seniors imparting stories and insights.

Focus on the Nasal Passages

Why the nose? It might sound playful, but the artwork pays tribute to a rarely recognized natural marvel: scientists have found that in less than one second, the reindeer's nose can heat the surrounding air it inhales by 80 degrees celsius, allowing the animal to survive in harsh Arctic climates. Expanding the nose to larger than human size, Sara notes, "produces a perception of inferiority that you as a person are not superior over nature." Sara is a former journalist, young adult author, and land defender, who hails from a reindeer-herding family in northern Norway. "Possibly that generates the potential to alter your viewpoint or spark some humbleness," she adds.

An Homage to Sámi Culture

The labyrinthine design is among various features in Sara's absorbing commission showcasing the heritage, science, and philosophy of the Sámi, the sole native group in Europe. Traditionally mobile, the Sámi number about 100,000 people spread across the Norwegian north, the Finnish Arctic, Sweden, and Russia's Kola Peninsula (an region they call Sápmi). They've endured oppression, cultural suppression, and eradication of their dialect by all four nations. By focusing on the reindeer, an creature at the core of the Sámi cosmology and origin tale, the art also spotlights the community's struggles connected to the climate crisis, property rights, and colonialism.

Meaning in Components

On the long entry ramp, there's a soaring, 26-meter formation of skins ensnared by utility lines. It represents a analogy for the societal frameworks limiting the Sámi. Partly a utility pole, part celestial ladder, this part of the artwork, called Goavve-, relates to the Sámi name for an extreme weather phenomenon, whereby dense layers of ice develop as changing temperatures thaw and refreeze the snow, encasing the reindeers' main winter sustenance, fungus. This phenomenon is a outcome of climate change, which is happening up to at an accelerated rate in the Polar region than elsewhere.

Previously, I visited Sara in the Norwegian far north during a severe cold period and joined Sámi reindeer keepers on their Arctic vehicles in chilly conditions as they hauled carts of food pellets on to the barren tundra to distribute by hand. These animals gathered round us, pawing the icy ground in futility for lichen-covered bits. This resource-intensive and labour-intensive procedure is having a significant influence on reindeer husbandry—and on the animals' self-sufficiency. Yet the alternative is death. When such conditions become commonplace, reindeer are dying—a number from lack of food, others suffocating after plunging into streams through unstable frozen surfaces. On one level, the installation is a memorial to them. "By overlapping of materials, in a way I'm bringing the phenomenon to London," says Sara.

Opposing Worldviews

The sculpture also emphasizes the clear contrast between the modern view of energy as a commodity to be exploited for profit and existence and the Sámi philosophy of energy as an natural essence in creatures, humans, and the environment. This venue's history as a industrial facility is linked with this, as is what the Sámi see as eco-imperialism by Scandinavian states. As they strive to be standard bearers for clean sources, Nordic nations have clashed with the Sámi over the construction of windfarms, river barriers, and extraction sites on their traditional territory; the Sámi argue their legal protections, incomes, and traditions are endangered. "It's very difficult being such a tiny group to defend yourself when the arguments are rooted in global sustainability," Sara notes. "Extractivism has adopted the rhetoric of ecology, but nonetheless it's just striving to find alternative ways to maintain practices of consumption."

Personal Conflicts

Sara and her kin have themselves clashed with the state authorities over its increasingly stringent regulations on reindeer management. A few years ago, Sara's sibling initiated a set of unsuccessful court actions over the mandatory slaughter of his livestock, supposedly to stop excessive feeding. In support, Sara developed a four-year set of artworks titled Pile O'Sápmi comprising a massive screen of four hundred cranial remains, which was displayed at the 2017 art exhibition Documenta 14 and later purchased by the national institution, where it resides in the entryway.

The Role of Art in Activism

For numerous Indigenous people, visual expression appears the sole domain in which they can be listened to by the global community. Recently, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|