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Guests to the renowned gallery are familiar to unexpected experiences in its expansive Turbine Hall. They've basked under an artificial sun, glided down helter skelters, and seen AI-powered sea creatures hovering through the air. But this marks the inaugural time they will be immersing themselves in the intricate nasal passages of a reindeer. The latest creative installation for this immense space—designed by Native Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—welcomes gallerygoers into a winding construction based on the scaled-up interior of a reindeer's nasal cavities. Once inside, they can wander around or unwind on reindeer hides, tuning in on earphones to tribal seniors imparting stories and insights.

Focus on the Nasal Passages

What's the focus on the nose? It could appear quirky, but the artwork celebrates a little-known scientific wonder: experts have uncovered that in under a second, the reindeer's nose can warm the surrounding air it breathes in by 80 degrees celsius, enabling the animal to thrive in harsh Arctic temperatures. Scaling the nose to bigger than a person, Sara explains, "generates a perception of inferiority that you as a person are not dominant over nature." She is a former writer, writer for kids, and environmental activist, who is from a pastoral family in the Norwegian Arctic. "Perhaps that creates the chance to shift your viewpoint or trigger some modesty," she adds.

A Celebration to Traditional Ways

The labyrinthine structure is one of several elements in Sara's engaging art project showcasing the heritage, understanding, and worldview of the Sámi, the sole native group in Europe. Semi-nomadic, the Sámi total roughly 100,000 people ranged across northern Norway, Finland, Sweden, and the Russian Arctic (an region they call Sápmi). They've faced oppression, cultural suppression, and repression of their language by all four nations. Through highlighting the reindeer, an animal at the heart of the Sámi mythology and creation story, the installation also highlights the people's challenges relating to the climate crisis, property rights, and imperialism.

Metaphor in Components

On the extended entry incline, there's a towering, 26-metre formation of reindeer hides ensnared by power and light cables. It serves as a analogy for the political and economic systems restricting the Sámi. Part pylon, part spiritual ascent, this part of the artwork, called Goavve-, points to the Sámi name for an extreme weather phenomenon, wherein dense layers of ice appear as changing temperatures liquefy and refreeze the snow, trapping the reindeers' key cold-season sustenance, lichen. This phenomenon is a result of planetary warming, which is occurring up to much more rapidly in the Polar region than in other regions.

Previously, I traveled to see Sara in a remote town during a goavvi winter and accompanied Sámi pastoralists on their Arctic vehicles in freezing temperatures as they transported trailers of animal nutrition on to the exposed Arctic plains to distribute through labor. The herd surrounded round us, digging the icy ground in vain for mossy morsels. This costly and labour-intensive method is having a severe influence on reindeer husbandry—and on the animals' natural survival. But the choice is death. As goavvi winters become commonplace, reindeer are succumbing—some from starvation, others suffocating after falling into lakes and rivers through prematurely melting ice. On one level, the art is a tribute to them. "With the layering of components, in a way I'm transporting the condition to London," says Sara.

Contrasting Belief Systems

The installation also emphasizes the clear contrast between the industrial interpretation of power as a asset to be utilized for economic benefit and existence and the Sámi philosophy of vitality as an inherent life force in animals, people, and the environment. This venue's legacy as a industrial facility is linked with this, as is what the Sámi consider green colonialism by Nordic countries. In their efforts to be leaders for renewable energy, Scandinavian countries have clashed with the Sámi over the development of windfarms, hydroelectric dams, and extraction sites on their ancestral land; the Sámi assert their legal protections, incomes, and traditions are endangered. "It's very difficult being such a limited population to protect your rights when the reasons are grounded in environmental protection," Sara observes. "Resource exploitation has adopted the language of ecology, but still it's just aiming to find alternative ways to maintain patterns of consumption."

Personal Struggles

Sara and her relatives have themselves clashed with the national administration over its tightening policies on herding. In 2016, Sara's sibling undertook a series of ultimately unsuccessful legal cases over the forced culling of his livestock, ostensibly to stop overgrazing. To back him, Sara produced a multi-year set of artworks named Pile O'Sápmi featuring a massive drape of 400 animal bones, which was shown at the the art exhibition Documenta 14 and later acquired by the National Museum of Oslo, where it hangs in the entryway.

Creative Expression as Awareness

For numerous Indigenous people, visual expression is the sole sphere in which they can be listened to by the global community. In 2022, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|