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Attendees to the renowned gallery are used to unexpected experiences in its vast Turbine Hall. They've sunbathed under an man-made sun, descended down spiral slides, and observed AI-powered jellyfish floating through the air. Yet this marks the first time they will be engaging themselves in the intricate nasal chambers of a reindeer. The current artist commission for this immense space—created by Indigenous Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—welcomes visitors into a maze-like design based on the scaled-up inside of a reindeer's nose airways. Once inside, they can meander around or relax on skins, tuning in on headphones to tribal seniors imparting tales and wisdom.

The Significance of the Nose

What's the focus on the nose? It may appear quirky, but the installation pays tribute to a little-known natural marvel: experts have found that in a fraction of a second, the reindeer's nose can heat the incoming air it takes in by 80°C, allowing the animal to thrive in inhospitable Arctic conditions. Scaling the nose to human-scale dimensions, Sara explains, "creates a feeling of smallness that you as a individual are not dominant over nature." She is a former writer, young adult author, and environmental activist, who is from a herding family in northern Norway. "Possibly that generates the potential to alter your perspective or evoke some modesty," she states.

A Tribute to Indigenous Heritage

The winding structure is among various components in Sara's absorbing exhibition honoring the heritage, knowledge, and worldview of the Sámi, the continent's original inhabitants. Traditionally mobile, the Sámi total approximately 100,000 people spread across the Norwegian north, the Finnish Arctic, Sweden, and the Russian Arctic (an region they call Sápmi). They've endured oppression, cultural suppression, and repression of their language by all four nations. By focusing on the reindeer, an animal at the heart of the Sámi mythology and creation story, the installation also spotlights the people's challenges connected to the environmental emergency, loss of territory, and external control.

Meaning in Components

On the extended entry incline, there's a towering, 26-meter structure of pelts ensnared by power and light cables. It represents a symbol for the political and economic systems restricting the Sámi. Like an electrical tower, part celestial ladder, this section of the artwork, titled Goavve-, refers to the Sámi term for an harsh environmental condition, in which solid sheets of ice develop as changing weather melt and solidify again the snow, trapping the reindeers' main cold-season food, fungus. This phenomenon is a result of climate change, which is happening up to four times faster in the Far North than in other regions.

A few years back, I met with Sara in Guovdageaidnu during a severe cold period and went with Sámi pastoralists on their motorized sleds in chilly conditions as they transported trailers of animal nutrition on to the wind-scoured Arctic plains to dispense by hand. The reindeer surrounded round us, digging the frozen ground in vain for vegetative pieces. This expensive and laborious method is having a severe influence on herding practices—and on the animals' natural survival. But the alternative is malnutrition. As goavvi winters become frequent, reindeer are succumbing—a number from hunger, others submerging after plunging into water bodies through unstable frozen surfaces. In a sense, the art is a memorial to them. "Through the stacking of materials, in a way I'm transporting the goavvi to London," says Sara.

Contrasting Worldviews

The sculpture also highlights the stark divergence between the western understanding of electricity as a asset to be utilized for gain and survival and the Sámi outlook of vitality as an innate life force in animals, humans, and nature. This venue's legacy as a coal and oil power station is linked with this, as is what the Sámi consider green colonialism by Nordic countries. While attempting to be exemplars for sustainable power, these states have locked horns with the Sámi over the development of windfarms, river barriers, and extraction sites on their ancestral land; the Sámi argue their human rights, livelihoods, and culture are endangered. "It's challenging being such a small minority to protect your rights when the justifications are rooted in environmental protection," Sara notes. "Extractivism has co-opted the rhetoric of ecology, but nonetheless it's just aiming to find better ways to persist in patterns of use."

Personal Struggles

The artist and her kin have themselves clashed with the Norwegian government over its tightening rules on animal husbandry. In 2016, Sara's sibling embarked on a series of ultimately unsuccessful legal cases over the required reduction of his animals, supposedly to stop excessive feeding. In support, Sara created a four-year set of creations called Pile O'Sápmi featuring a massive curtain of 400 cranial remains, which was exhibited at the 2017 art exhibition Documenta 14 and later purchased by the national institution, where it resides in the entrance.

The Role of Art in Activism

For many Sámi, visual expression is the only realm in which they can be listened to by outsiders. Recently, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|