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Visitors to the renowned gallery are accustomed to unusual experiences in its expansive Turbine Hall. They have relaxed under an artificial sun, descended down helter skelters, and seen robotic sea creatures drifting through the air. But this marks the first time they will be venturing themselves in the complex nose cavities of a reindeer. The current creative installation for this cavernous space—designed by Indigenous Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—welcomes visitors into a labyrinthine construction based on the enlarged inside of a reindeer's nasal cavities. Inside, they can meander around or chill out on reindeer hides, tuning in on headphones to Sámi elders imparting stories and knowledge.

Focus on the Nasal Passages

Why choose the nasal structure? It could seem whimsical, but the exhibit pays tribute to a obscure scientific wonder: researchers have uncovered that in a fraction of a second, the reindeer's nose can warm the ambient air it breathes in by 80 degrees celsius, helping the creature to survive in extreme Arctic conditions. Enlarging the nose to larger than human size, Sara explains, "creates a sense of insignificance that you as a person are not superior over nature." Sara is a former journalist, children's author, and land defender, who is from a herding family in northern Norway. "Perhaps that creates the potential to alter your outlook or evoke some modesty," she adds.

A Celebration to Traditional Ways

The winding installation is part of a elements in Sara's immersive art project showcasing the heritage, science, and worldview of the Sámi, the sole native group in Europe. Traditionally mobile, the Sámi number roughly 100,000 people distributed across northern Norway, Finland, the Swedish Lapland, and the Russian Arctic (an region they call Sápmi). They've experienced persecution, integration policies, and suppression of their dialect by all four nations. Through highlighting the reindeer, an animal at the core of the Sámi belief system and creation story, the work also spotlights the group's challenges relating to the climate crisis, property rights, and colonialism.

Meaning in Elements

At the long entrance ramp, there's a soaring, eighty-five-foot structure of skins ensnared by power and light cables. It can be read as a symbol for the governance and financial structures restricting the Sámi. Part pylon, part spiritual ascent, this section of the exhibit, called Goavve-, relates to the Sámi term for an severe climatic event, in which solid sheets of ice appear as changing weather melt and solidify again the snow, trapping the reindeers' key winter food, fungus. Goavvi is a outcome of global heating, which is occurring up to four times faster in the Arctic than elsewhere.

Previously, I visited Sara in a remote town during a icy season and joined Sámi pastoralists on their snowmobiles in chilly conditions as they transported containers of food pellets on to the exposed Arctic plains to provide manually. These animals gathered round us, scratching the frozen ground in vain attempts for lichen-covered bits. This costly and labour-intensive procedure is having a severe impact on animal rearing—and on the animals' self-sufficiency. However the choice is malnutrition. As goavvi winters become routine, reindeer are dying—a number from hunger, others submerging after sinking in lakes and rivers through prematurely melting ice. On one level, the installation is a tribute to them. "By overlapping of components, in a way I'm transporting the phenomenon to London," says Sara.

Opposing Perspectives

The installation also underscores the stark difference between the industrial interpretation of power as a commodity to be harnessed for profit and livelihood and the Sámi philosophy of energy as an inherent power in animals, individuals, and land. The gallery's past as a coal and oil power station is tied up in this, as is what the Sámi view as green colonialism by Nordic countries. As they strive to be exemplars for renewable energy, these states have locked horns with the Sámi over the construction of windfarms, hydroelectric dams, and mines on their native soil; the Sámi assert their legal protections, livelihoods, and culture are endangered. "It's hard being such a limited population to defend yourself when the arguments are based on saving the world," Sara notes. "Extractivism has co-opted the discourse of sustainability, but nonetheless it's just striving to find more suitable ways to continue patterns of use."

Individual Struggles

The artist and her family have themselves clashed with the state authorities over its tightening rules on animal husbandry. Previously, Sara's sibling initiated a series of ultimately unsuccessful legal cases over the required reduction of his herd, supposedly to stop vegetation depletion. As a show of solidarity, Sara produced a four-year collection of artworks titled Pile O'Sápmi comprising a massive curtain of numerous cranial remains, which was shown at the 2017's show Documenta 14 and later purchased by the public gallery, where it hangs in the entryway.

The Role of Art in Advocacy

For numerous Indigenous people, visual expression appears the sole realm in which they can be heard by people of other nations. Recently, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|