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Attendees to the renowned gallery are accustomed to unusual displays in its spacious Turbine Hall. They've basked under an man-made sun, slid down spiral slides, and witnessed AI-powered jellyfish drifting through the air. But this marks the initial time they will be venturing themselves in the detailed nasal cavities of a reindeer. The latest creative installation for this huge space—created by Indigenous Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—invites patrons into a labyrinthine design modeled after the expanded interior of a reindeer's nose airways. Once inside, they can meander around or unwind on reindeer hides, tuning in on headphones to community leaders imparting narratives and wisdom.

The Significance of the Nose

Why choose the nasal structure? It may appear quirky, but the installation honors a obscure scientific wonder: experts have found that in a fraction of a second, the reindeer's nose can warm the ambient air it takes in by 80 degrees celsius, helping the animal to survive in inhospitable Arctic climates. Enlarging the nose to human-scale dimensions, Sara says, "creates a feeling of inferiority that you as a person are not dominant over nature." The artist is a ex- writer, writer for kids, and rights advocate, who comes from a herding family in the far north of Norway. "Perhaps that creates the possibility to change your outlook or spark some humbleness," she adds.

An Homage to Indigenous Heritage

The labyrinthine design is part of a features in Sara's immersive art project honoring the culture, understanding, and worldview of the Sámi, the continent's original inhabitants. Semi-nomadic, the Sámi total approximately 100,000 people ranged across the Norwegian north, the Finnish Arctic, Sweden, and Russia's Kola Peninsula (an territory they call Sápmi). They've endured persecution, integration policies, and suppression of their tongue by all four nations. Through highlighting the reindeer, an creature at the core of the Sámi mythology and creation story, the work also draws attention to the people's issues relating to the climate crisis, land dispossession, and external control.

Meaning in Materials

Along the long entry ramp, there's a towering, 26-metre formation of pelts trapped by utility lines. It represents a metaphor for the societal frameworks restricting the Sámi. Like an electrical tower, part celestial ladder, this section of the installation, called Goavve-, refers to the Sámi name for an extreme weather phenomenon, whereby thick layers of ice form as changing temperatures liquefy and solidify again the snow, trapping the reindeers' key cold-season sustenance, lichen. The condition is a outcome of planetary warming, which is occurring up to much more rapidly in the Far North than in other regions.

A few years back, I visited Sara in a remote town during a severe cold period and went with Sámi reindeer keepers on their motorized sleds in biting cold as they carried carts of animal nutrition on to the exposed tundra to distribute by hand. These animals crowded round us, pawing the slippery ground in vain for vegetative morsels. This expensive and demanding procedure is having a drastic effect on animal rearing—and on the animals' self-sufficiency. However the choice is starvation. As goavvi winters become commonplace, reindeer are dying—some from starvation, others submerging after plunging into lakes and rivers through unstable frozen surfaces. In a sense, the installation is a memorial to them. "Through the stacking of components, in a way I'm bringing the goavvi to London," says Sara.

Opposing Belief Systems

The sculpture also highlights the clear difference between the western understanding of power as a commodity to be harnessed for gain and survival and the Sámi worldview of vitality as an innate power in animals, individuals, and the environment. The gallery's past as a coal and oil power station is tied up in 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 locked horns with the Sámi over the development of turbine fields, river barriers, and extraction sites on their ancestral land; the Sámi argue their fundamental freedoms, ways of life, and culture are endangered. "It's hard being such a small minority to defend yourself when the justifications are based on environmental protection," Sara comments. "Resource exploitation has co-opted the language of sustainability, but nonetheless it's just aiming to find more suitable ways to maintain habits of use."

Family Conflicts

Sara and her kin have personally disagreed with the Norwegian government over its ever-stricter regulations on reindeer management. Previously, Sara's sibling embarked on a sequence of unsuccessful lawsuits over the mandatory slaughter of his livestock, apparently to stop excessive feeding. As a show of solidarity, Sara produced a multi-year collection of artworks named Pile O'Sápmi including a massive screen of four hundred animal bones, which was displayed at the 2017 event Documenta 14 and later purchased by the national institution, where it resides in the entrance.

The Role of Art in Awareness

Among the community, creative work appears the exclusive sphere in which they can be heard by people of other nations. Two years ago, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|