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Attendees to the renowned gallery are familiar to unusual displays in its vast Turbine Hall. They have sunbathed under an simulated sun, descended down helter skelters, and witnessed automated jellyfish hovering through the air. Yet this marks the inaugural time they will be venturing themselves in the detailed nose passages of a reindeer. The latest artistic project for this cavernous space—created by Indigenous Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—welcomes patrons into a winding structure modeled after the scaled-up interior of a reindeer's nasal airways. Upon entering, they can wander around or unwind on pelts, listening on earphones to community leaders imparting narratives and insights.

Why the Nose?

Why the nose? It could sound playful, but the artwork honors a little-known natural marvel: scientists have discovered that in less than one second, the reindeer's nose can heat the incoming air it breathes in by 80 degrees celsius, helping the creature to survive in harsh Arctic temperatures. Enlarging the nose to human-scale dimensions, Sara says, "generates a feeling of insignificance that you as a person are not in control over nature." The artist is a ex- reporter, children's author, and environmental activist, who is from a reindeer-herding family in the Norwegian Arctic. "Maybe that creates the chance to shift your viewpoint or spark some humility," she adds.

A Tribute to Indigenous Heritage

The winding installation is part of a components in Sara's absorbing commission celebrating the traditions, knowledge, and beliefs of the Sámi, the sole native group in Europe. Partially migratory, the Sámi total roughly 100,000 people distributed across the Norwegian north, the Finnish Arctic, Sweden, and Russia's Kola Peninsula (an area they call Sápmi). They have endured oppression, forced assimilation, and repression of their dialect by all four nations. By focusing on the reindeer, an animal at the heart of the Sámi belief system and origin tale, the art also highlights the community's challenges associated with the climate crisis, property rights, and external control.

Metaphor in Materials

On the extended access ramp, there's a soaring, eighty-five-foot structure of reindeer hides trapped by power and light cables. It can be read as a symbol for the political and economic systems restricting the Sámi. Partly a utility pole, part heavenly staircase, this part of the installation, titled Goavve-, refers to the Sámi term for an harsh environmental condition, wherein dense coatings of ice develop as varying temperatures melt and solidify again the snow, locking in the reindeers' key winter food, fungus. This phenomenon is a outcome of planetary warming, which is happening up to at an accelerated rate in the Polar region than elsewhere.

A few years back, I visited Sara in the Norwegian far north during a severe cold period and went with Sámi pastoralists on their snowmobiles in freezing temperatures as they carried trailers of supplementary feed on to the wind-scoured tundra to distribute through labor. These animals crowded round us, digging the frozen ground in vain for vegetative bits. This costly and labour-intensive method is having a significant effect on reindeer husbandry—and on the animals' natural survival. However the alternative is malnutrition. When such conditions become frequent, reindeer are succumbing—a number from hunger, others suffocating after falling into lakes and rivers through unstable frozen surfaces. In a sense, the art is a memorial to them. "With the layering of elements, in a way I'm bringing the phenomenon to London," says Sara.

Diverging Belief Systems

The installation also emphasizes the clear difference between the industrial understanding of energy as a asset to be harnessed for profit and livelihood and the Sámi philosophy of life force as an innate power in creatures, humans, and the environment. This venue's legacy as a fossil fuel plant is tied up in this, as is what the Sámi consider environmental exploitation by Scandinavian states. While attempting to be standard bearers for renewable energy, these states have clashed with the Sámi over the development of wind energy projects, river barriers, and mines on their ancestral land; the Sámi argue their fundamental freedoms, ways of life, and way of life are endangered. "It's hard being such a tiny group to defend yourself when the arguments are rooted in environmental protection," Sara notes. "Mining practices has appropriated the discourse of environmentalism, but nonetheless it's just aiming to find better ways to maintain practices of use."

Individual Challenges

She and her kin have themselves clashed with the state authorities over its increasingly stringent rules on herding. In 2016, Sara's brother initiated a series of finally failed court actions over the forced culling of his animals, ostensibly to stop vegetation depletion. To back him, Sara developed a multi-year set of pieces called Pile O'Sápmi featuring a huge curtain of 400 reindeer skulls, which was shown at the 2017 art exhibition Documenta 14 and later acquired by the public gallery, where it is displayed in the entrance.

Creative Expression as Advocacy

For numerous Indigenous people, creative work seems the only realm in which they can be listened to by people of other nations. In 2022, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|