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Visitors to the renowned gallery are used to unusual encounters in its spacious Turbine Hall. They've relaxed under an artificial sun, slid down helter skelters, and seen AI-powered jellyfish drifting through the air. Yet this marks the inaugural time they will be venturing themselves in the detailed nasal chambers of a reindeer. The newest creative installation for this immense space—developed by Indigenous Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—encourages patrons into a winding structure inspired by the enlarged interior of a reindeer's nasal airways. Once inside, they can stroll around or chill out on pelts, listening on headphones to community leaders telling narratives and wisdom.

The Significance of the Nose

Why the nose? It might appear quirky, but the artwork pays tribute to a rarely recognized biological feat: researchers have found that in a fraction of a second, the reindeer's nose can raise the temperature of the incoming air it breathes in by eighty degrees, allowing the animal to survive in harsh Arctic conditions. Scaling the nose to larger than human size, Sara says, "creates a sense of insignificance that you as a individual are not superior over nature." Sara is a ex- reporter, writer for kids, and rights advocate, who hails from a herding family in the Norwegian Arctic. "Perhaps that generates the chance to change your viewpoint or evoke some humbleness," she adds.

A Tribute to Sámi Culture

The maze-like structure is one of several elements in Sara's immersive exhibition celebrating the heritage, knowledge, and worldview of the Sámi, the continent's original inhabitants. Semi-nomadic, the Sámi number approximately 100,000 people distributed across the Norwegian north, Finland, the Swedish Lapland, and the Kola region (an region they call Sápmi). They've faced persecution, forced assimilation, and suppression of their language by all four countries. Through highlighting the reindeer, an animal at the core of the Sámi belief system and origin tale, the installation also draws attention to the group's challenges associated with the environmental emergency, property rights, and external control.

Metaphor in Materials

On the long access slope, there's a looming, 26-meter formation of skins entangled by utility lines. It represents a metaphor for the political and economic systems restricting the Sámi. Partly a utility pole, part heavenly staircase, this part of the artwork, titled Goavve-, points to the Sámi term for an harsh environmental condition, wherein solid sheets of ice form as changing weather liquefy and solidify again the snow, trapping the reindeers' primary cold-season nourishment, lichen. The condition is a outcome of planetary warming, which is happening up to four times faster in the Polar region than globally.

Three years ago, I traveled to see Sara in the Norwegian far north during a severe cold period and joined Sámi pastoralists on their snowmobiles in biting cold as they transported carts of food pellets on to the barren tundra to dispense by hand. The herd gathered round us, digging the icy ground in futility for vegetative pieces. This resource-intensive and demanding process is having a drastic influence on reindeer husbandry—and on the animals' self-sufficiency. However the choice is malnutrition. When such conditions become commonplace, reindeer are succumbing—a number from hunger, others suffocating after falling into streams through unstable frozen surfaces. On one level, the art is a tribute to them. "By overlapping of components, in a way I'm introducing the condition to London," says Sara.

Contrasting Perspectives

This artwork also emphasizes the sharp contrast between the modern interpretation of electricity as a resource to be exploited for gain and livelihood and the Sámi philosophy of vitality as an innate life force in creatures, humans, and nature. This venue's legacy as a coal and oil power station is linked with this, as is what the Sámi see as green colonialism by regional governments. As they strive to be standard bearers for renewable energy, Nordic nations have locked horns with the Sámi over the development of turbine fields, river barriers, and mines on their traditional territory; the Sámi argue their legal protections, livelihoods, and culture are at risk. "It's challenging being such a small minority to protect your rights when the arguments are grounded in saving the world," Sara comments. "Resource exploitation has appropriated the language of ecology, but nonetheless it's just striving to find alternative ways to continue patterns of consumption."

Personal Conflicts

She and her family have themselves disagreed with the Norwegian government over its ever-stricter rules on animal husbandry. In 2016, Sara's sibling embarked on a series of finally failed court actions over the forced culling of his herd, apparently to stop overgrazing. As a show of solidarity, Sara developed a multi-year set of pieces named Pile O'Sápmi featuring a huge screen of 400 cranial remains, which was shown at the 2017's show Documenta 14 and later purchased by the public gallery, where it is displayed in the entryway.

Art as Activism

Among the community, creative work appears the sole realm in which they can be understood by people of other nations. Recently, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|