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Visitors to the renowned gallery are used to unexpected displays in its expansive Turbine Hall. They have basked under an artificial sun, descended down amusement rides, and seen robotic jellyfish hovering through the air. However this marks the inaugural time they will be venturing themselves in the detailed nasal chambers of a reindeer. The current artist commission for this immense space—created by Native Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—welcomes visitors into a labyrinthine construction modeled after the enlarged inside of a reindeer's nose cavities. Once inside, they can stroll around or chill out on pelts, tuning in on headphones to tribal seniors telling stories and wisdom.

Why the Nose?

Why choose the nasal structure? It might sound whimsical, but the exhibit celebrates a little-known biological feat: experts have found that in less than one second, the reindeer's nose can heat the incoming air it breathes in by 80 degrees celsius, allowing the creature to thrive in harsh Arctic temperatures. Scaling the nose to human-scale dimensions, Sara notes, "produces a feeling of inferiority that you as a individual are not superior over nature." She is a former journalist, children's author, and rights advocate, who hails from a reindeer-herding family in the Norwegian Arctic. "Possibly that generates the possibility to alter your outlook or spark some modesty," she adds.

A Celebration to Traditional Ways

The labyrinthine design is among various components in Sara's absorbing commission celebrating the heritage, knowledge, and beliefs of the Sámi, Europe's only Indigenous people. Partially migratory, the Sámi count about 100,000 people spread across northern Norway, Finland, the Swedish Lapland, and the Russian Arctic (an region they call Sápmi). They have experienced discrimination, cultural suppression, 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 art also highlights the people's issues associated with the climate crisis, land dispossession, and imperialism.

Symbolism in Elements

At the lengthy access ramp, there's a towering, eighty-five-foot formation of pelts trapped by electrical wires. It represents a analogy for the political and economic systems constraining the Sámi. Like an electrical tower, part spiritual ascent, this section of the artwork, called Goavve-, relates to the Sámi term for an severe climatic event, whereby dense layers of ice form as fluctuating temperatures thaw and refreeze the snow, trapping the reindeers' key winter sustenance, lichen. Goavvi is a result of climate change, which is happening up to at an accelerated rate in the Polar region than elsewhere.

A few years back, I visited Sara in Guovdageaidnu during a goavvi winter and joined Sámi reindeer keepers on their Arctic vehicles in biting cold as they transported containers of supplementary feed on to the wind-scoured frozen landscape to provide through labor. The reindeer surrounded round us, scratching the slippery ground in vain for vegetative morsels. This costly and demanding method is having a severe impact on animal rearing—and on the animals' self-sufficiency. However the alternative is starvation. As goavvi winters become frequent, reindeer are succumbing—some from hunger, others drowning after plunging into streams through unstable frozen surfaces. On one level, the installation is a memorial to them. "With the layering of components, in a way I'm transporting the phenomenon to London," says Sara.

Contrasting Belief Systems

The installation also underscores the stark divergence between the western understanding of electricity as a resource to be exploited for profit and survival and the Sámi philosophy of energy as an natural power in creatures, individuals, and the environment. The gallery's past as a industrial facility is linked with this, as is what the Sámi see as green colonialism by Scandinavian states. In their efforts to be standard bearers for renewable energy, Scandinavian countries have clashed with the Sámi over the construction of turbine fields, hydroelectric dams, and digging operations on their ancestral land; the Sámi assert their human rights, ways of life, and culture are endangered. "It's challenging being such a tiny group to stand your ground when the reasons are based on global sustainability," Sara notes. "Resource exploitation has appropriated the language of sustainability, but still it's just aiming to find better ways to maintain habits of use."

Individual Challenges

Sara and her kin have themselves disagreed with the state authorities over its ever-stricter policies on reindeer management. A few years ago, Sara's brother initiated a series of ultimately unsuccessful legal cases over the forced culling of his animals, ostensibly to stop vegetation depletion. To back him, Sara produced a four-year set of creations named Pile O'Sápmi including a colossal drape of 400 cranial remains, which was shown at the 2017 art exhibition Documenta 14 and later acquired by the National Museum of Oslo, where it resides in the entrance.

Creative Expression as Awareness

For numerous Indigenous people, art appears the sole realm in which they can be heard by people of other nations. In 2022, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|