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Guests to the renowned gallery are used to surprising encounters in its vast Turbine Hall. They have relaxed under an simulated sun, descended down spiral slides, and seen AI-powered sea creatures hovering through the air. Yet this marks the initial time they will be engaging themselves in the detailed nose passages of a reindeer. The newest creative installation for this immense space—developed by Indigenous Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—welcomes visitors into a winding structure modeled after the enlarged inside of a reindeer's nose passages. Upon entering, they can stroll around or relax on pelts, tuning in on headphones to community leaders sharing stories and insights.

Why the Nose?

What's the focus on the nose? It may seem whimsical, but the artwork celebrates a rarely recognized natural marvel: experts have discovered that in a fraction of a second, the reindeer's nose can raise the temperature of the incoming air it takes in by 80°C, allowing the animal to survive in harsh Arctic conditions. Expanding the nose to bigger than a person, Sara explains, "creates a perception of inferiority that you as a human being are not dominant over nature." She is a ex- journalist, writer for kids, and environmental activist, who hails from a herding family in the Norwegian Arctic. "Maybe that creates the possibility to change your perspective or evoke some humbleness," she adds.

An Homage to Indigenous Heritage

The maze-like installation is among various elements in Sara's engaging art project honoring the traditions, understanding, and philosophy of the Sámi, the sole native group in Europe. Partially migratory, the Sámi count about 100,000 people ranged across northern Norway, the Finnish Arctic, Sweden, and Russia's Kola Peninsula (an region they call Sápmi). They've experienced oppression, cultural suppression, and suppression of their dialect by all four states. With an emphasis on the reindeer, an animal at the core of the Sámi mythology and origin tale, the art also draws attention to the community's challenges connected to the environmental emergency, property rights, and external control.

Meaning in Elements

At the extended entry incline, there's a soaring, 26-meter formation of pelts trapped by electrical wires. It serves as a analogy for the societal frameworks constraining the Sámi. Part pylon, part heavenly staircase, this part of the exhibit, named Goavve-, points to the Sámi name for an extreme weather phenomenon, wherein solid coatings of ice form as varying weather melt and ice over the snow, encasing the reindeers' main cold-season nourishment, fungus. Goavvi is a outcome of climate change, which is happening up to at an accelerated rate in the Arctic than elsewhere.

Previously, I traveled to see Sara in a remote town during a icy season and accompanied Sámi herders on their motorized sleds in chilly conditions as they hauled carts of food pellets on to the wind-scoured frozen landscape to dispense by hand. The reindeer surrounded round us, digging the icy ground in futility for mossy bits. This expensive and demanding procedure is having a drastic influence on reindeer husbandry—and on the animals' independence. But the other option is death. When such conditions become commonplace, reindeer are succumbing—some from hunger, others submerging after sinking in streams through unstable frozen surfaces. On one level, the art is a monument to them. "Through the stacking of materials, in a way I'm bringing the condition to London," says Sara.

Opposing Belief Systems

This artwork also underscores the sharp difference between the modern view of power as a resource to be utilized for profit and survival and the Sámi philosophy of energy as an innate life force in creatures, people, and nature. The gallery's past as a coal and oil power station is linked with this, as is what the Sámi consider environmental exploitation by Nordic countries. In their efforts to be standard bearers for clean sources, these states have locked horns with the Sámi over the construction of windfarms, water power facilities, and digging operations on their ancestral land; the Sámi contend their legal protections, incomes, and way of life are endangered. "It's challenging being such a tiny group to protect your rights when the justifications are rooted in saving the world," Sara comments. "Extractivism has co-opted the rhetoric of environmentalism, but yet it's just striving to find more suitable ways to continue patterns of use."

Personal Conflicts

She and her relatives have themselves disagreed with the national administration over its increasingly stringent rules on herding. Previously, Sara's sibling initiated a series of ultimately unsuccessful legal cases over the mandatory slaughter of his animals, supposedly to stop vegetation depletion. As a show of solidarity, Sara developed a multi-year collection of pieces titled Pile O'Sápmi including a massive screen of four hundred cranial remains, which was shown at the 2017's art exhibition Documenta 14 and later purchased by the national institution, where it is displayed in the entrance.

Creative Expression as Activism

Among the community, creative work appears the exclusive sphere in which they can be heard by outsiders. In 2022, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|