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Visitors to the renowned gallery are accustomed to surprising displays in its expansive Turbine Hall. They have sunbathed under an artificial sun, descended down amusement rides, and witnessed automated jellyfish hovering through the air. Yet this marks the first time they will be venturing themselves in the intricate nose chambers of a reindeer. The newest artist commission for this cavernous space—created by Native Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—encourages visitors into a winding construction modeled after the scaled-up interior of a reindeer's nasal airways. Upon entering, they can meander around or chill out on pelts, tuning in on earphones to community leaders telling tales and knowledge.

The Significance of the Nose

Why the nose? It may appear whimsical, but the installation honors a little-known scientific wonder: scientists have uncovered that in less than one second, the reindeer's nose can heat the incoming air it takes in by eighty degrees, allowing the creature to survive in extreme Arctic temperatures. Enlarging the nose to human-scale dimensions, Sara says, "creates a sense of insignificance that you as a individual are not dominant over nature." She is a former journalist, writer for kids, and environmental activist, who is from a pastoral family in northern Norway. "Possibly that generates the potential to shift your viewpoint or spark some humility," she adds.

A Celebration to Sámi Culture

The labyrinthine installation is one of several components in Sara's immersive art project celebrating the culture, understanding, and philosophy of the Sámi, Europe's only Indigenous people. Semi-nomadic, the Sámi total approximately 100,000 people distributed across northern Norway, Finland, Sweden, and the Russian Arctic (an territory they call Sápmi). They've faced oppression, integration policies, and repression of their language by all four nations. With an emphasis on the reindeer, an creature at the heart of the Sámi cosmology and creation story, the work also draws attention to the people's issues connected to the climate crisis, loss of territory, and colonialism.

Metaphor in Components

At the lengthy entry incline, there's a looming, 26-metre structure of reindeer hides entangled by power and light cables. It can be read as a symbol for the societal frameworks constraining the Sámi. Partly a utility pole, part heavenly staircase, this part of the artwork, called Goavve-, relates to the Sámi name for an extreme weather phenomenon, whereby solid coatings of ice form as changing temperatures melt and solidify again the snow, trapping the reindeers' primary winter sustenance, moss. This phenomenon is a result of planetary warming, which is taking place 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 accompanied Sámi pastoralists on their motorized sleds in biting cold as they transported carts of animal nutrition on to the exposed frozen landscape to provide manually. These animals gathered round us, digging the frozen ground in vain attempts for lichen-covered pieces. This resource-intensive and labour-intensive method is having a severe effect on herding practices—and on the animals' self-sufficiency. But the other option is malnutrition. As goavvi winters become frequent, reindeer are succumbing—a number from lack of food, others submerging after sinking in streams through prematurely melting ice. To some extent, the work is a tribute to them. "By overlapping of materials, in a way I'm introducing the phenomenon to London," says Sara.

Diverging Perspectives

This artwork also emphasizes the stark contrast between the modern interpretation of energy as a commodity to be harnessed for profit and livelihood and the Sámi philosophy of life force as an inherent life force in creatures, people, and the environment. The gallery's past as a industrial facility is tied up in this, as is what the Sámi consider eco-imperialism by regional governments. As they strive to be standard bearers for sustainable power, these states have clashed with the Sámi over the construction of wind energy projects, water power facilities, and extraction sites on their native soil; the Sámi assert their fundamental freedoms, ways of life, and way of life are at risk. "It's challenging being such a small minority to protect your rights when the justifications are grounded in saving the world," Sara observes. "Resource exploitation has adopted the language of environmentalism, but still it's just attempting to find more suitable ways to persist in patterns of consumption."

Individual Challenges

Sara and her kin have personally clashed with the national administration over its increasingly stringent policies on herding. Previously, Sara's sibling undertook a sequence of finally failed lawsuits over the forced culling of his herd, supposedly to stop overgrazing. As a show of solidarity, Sara produced a multi-year set of artworks called Pile O'Sápmi featuring a colossal screen of four hundred reindeer skulls, which was exhibited at the 2017's event Documenta 14 and later purchased by the national institution, where it is displayed in the lobby.

The Role of Art in Advocacy

Among the community, art seems the only domain in which they can be heard by outsiders. In 2022, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|