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Attendees to the renowned gallery are familiar to unexpected displays in its expansive Turbine Hall. They have basked under an man-made sun, slid down amusement rides, and observed AI-powered jellyfish hovering through the air. Yet this marks the first time they will be venturing themselves in the complex nasal passages of a reindeer. The current creative installation for this cavernous space—developed by Indigenous Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—invites gallerygoers into a labyrinthine construction modeled after the enlarged inside of a reindeer's nasal cavities. Once inside, they can wander around or chill out on pelts, tuning in on headphones to community leaders telling tales and knowledge.

The Significance of the Nose

What's the focus on the nose? It could sound quirky, but the installation celebrates a rarely recognized natural marvel: researchers have found that in less than one second, the reindeer's nose can warm the surrounding air it takes in by 80°C, enabling the animal to thrive in inhospitable Arctic temperatures. Expanding the nose to bigger than a person, Sara explains, "generates a perception of insignificance that you as a individual are not in control over nature." The artist is a ex- reporter, young adult author, and environmental activist, who comes from a pastoral family in the Norwegian Arctic. "Maybe that generates the possibility to change your viewpoint or trigger some humbleness," she adds.

An Homage to Indigenous Heritage

The winding installation is among various components in Sara's absorbing commission honoring the heritage, knowledge, and beliefs of the Sámi, Europe's only Indigenous people. Traditionally mobile, the Sámi count about 100,000 people spread across northern Norway, the Finnish Arctic, the Swedish Lapland, and Russia's Kola Peninsula (an area they call Sápmi). They have experienced oppression, cultural suppression, and suppression of their dialect by all four nations. Through highlighting the reindeer, an animal at the heart of the Sámi belief system and founding narrative, the work also highlights the group's struggles relating to the environmental emergency, loss of territory, and colonialism.

Meaning in Materials

Along the lengthy access incline, there's a looming, eighty-five-foot formation of reindeer hides entangled by electrical wires. It serves as a symbol for the societal frameworks limiting the Sámi. Partly a utility pole, part celestial ladder, this part of the exhibit, named Goavve-, points to the Sámi word for an extreme weather phenomenon, in which thick sheets of ice appear as changing temperatures thaw and solidify again the snow, trapping the reindeers' primary winter sustenance, fungus. This phenomenon is a consequence of climate change, which is taking place up to much more rapidly in the Far North than globally.

Three years ago, I met with Sara in a remote town during a goavvi winter and accompanied Sámi reindeer keepers on their motorized sleds in biting cold as they hauled containers of food pellets on to the barren tundra to provide through labor. These animals gathered round us, scratching the frozen ground in futility for vegetative bits. This expensive and labour-intensive method is having a significant influence on animal rearing—and on the animals' natural survival. But the alternative is death. As these icy periods become routine, reindeer are perishing—some from hunger, others suffocating after sinking in lakes and rivers through unstable frozen surfaces. To some extent, the art is a tribute to them. "By overlapping of components, in a way I'm introducing the condition to London," says Sara.

Contrasting Worldviews

The sculpture also highlights the clear divergence between the industrial view of energy as a asset to be exploited for gain and survival and the Sámi philosophy of life force as an innate power in creatures, individuals, and land. The gallery's legacy as a fossil fuel plant is connected to this, as is what the Sámi see as green colonialism by Scandinavian states. As they strive to be standard bearers for sustainable power, these states have disagreed with the Sámi over the development of wind energy projects, river barriers, and digging operations on their traditional territory; the Sámi argue their legal protections, incomes, and way of life are endangered. "It's hard being such a limited population to protect your rights when the arguments are based on environmental protection," Sara comments. "Resource exploitation has adopted the discourse of sustainability, but still it's just striving to find better ways to maintain habits of consumption."

Individual Conflicts

The artist and her relatives have themselves clashed with the national administration over its ever-stricter rules on animal husbandry. Previously, Sara's brother initiated a set of unsuccessful lawsuits over the forced culling of his herd, ostensibly to stop overgrazing. To back him, Sara created a four-year set of pieces named Pile O'Sápmi featuring a massive drape of 400 reindeer skulls, which was exhibited at the 2017's event Documenta 14 and later obtained by the public gallery, where it is displayed in the entryway.

Creative Expression as Awareness

For numerous Indigenous people, art is the only realm in which they can be heard by the global community. In 2022, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|