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Attendees to the renowned gallery are used to unexpected displays in its vast Turbine Hall. They've basked under an man-made sun, glided down spiral slides, and observed automated jellyfish hovering through the air. However this marks the inaugural time they will be immersing themselves in the complex nose chambers of a reindeer. The current creative installation for this immense space—designed by Native Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—invites visitors into a labyrinthine construction inspired by the enlarged inside of a reindeer's nasal passages. Upon entering, they can stroll around or relax on skins, listening on headphones to tribal seniors sharing stories and insights.

Why the Nose?

Why the nose? It might appear playful, but the installation honors a rarely recognized scientific wonder: experts have discovered that in a fraction of a second, the reindeer's nose can heat the incoming air it breathes in by eighty degrees, enabling the animal to endure in harsh Arctic temperatures. Scaling the nose to bigger than a person, Sara explains, "generates a feeling of insignificance that you as a human being are not dominant over nature." She is a former reporter, writer for kids, and land defender, who comes from a herding family in northern Norway. "Perhaps that generates the chance to change your perspective or trigger some humbleness," she continues.

A Tribute to Indigenous Heritage

The maze-like structure is one of several components in Sara's engaging commission showcasing the culture, knowledge, and beliefs of the Sámi, the continent's original inhabitants. Traditionally mobile, the Sámi total approximately 100,000 people distributed across northern Norway, Finland, the Swedish Lapland, and Russia's Kola Peninsula (an area they call Sápmi). They've endured persecution, integration policies, and eradication of their tongue by all four countries. By focusing on the reindeer, an animal at the core of the Sámi cosmology and origin tale, the installation also draws attention to the group's issues connected to the environmental emergency, property rights, and imperialism.

Metaphor in Materials

On the long access slope, there's a towering, eighty-five-foot formation of skins trapped by utility lines. It serves as a metaphor for the governance and financial structures constraining the Sámi. Partly a utility pole, part spiritual ascent, this component of the artwork, called Goavve-, refers to the Sámi term for an harsh environmental condition, in which thick coatings of ice develop as changing conditions melt and ice over the snow, locking in the reindeers' key cold-season nourishment, lichen. The condition is a outcome of global heating, which is taking place up to much more rapidly in the Arctic than globally.

Previously, I traveled to see Sara in Guovdageaidnu during a severe cold period and joined Sámi pastoralists on their snowmobiles in freezing temperatures as they carried containers of food pellets on to the exposed tundra to dispense manually. The reindeer surrounded round us, scratching the icy ground in futility for mossy morsels. This resource-intensive and labour-intensive procedure is having a drastic effect on animal rearing—and on the animals' natural survival. Yet the alternative is malnutrition. As goavvi winters become routine, reindeer are succumbing—some from hunger, others suffocating after plunging into water bodies through prematurely melting ice. To some extent, the work is a memorial to them. "Through the stacking of materials, in a way I'm introducing the condition to London," says Sara.

Opposing Perspectives

This artwork also underscores the clear difference between the modern understanding of energy as a commodity to be harnessed for profit and survival and the Sámi outlook of life force as an innate essence in animals, people, and land. The gallery's history as a coal and oil power station is connected to this, as is what the Sámi view as environmental exploitation by Nordic countries. In their efforts to be standard bearers for clean sources, these states have disagreed with the Sámi over the development of turbine fields, hydroelectric dams, and extraction sites on their native soil; the Sámi contend their human rights, ways of life, and culture are endangered. "It's hard being such a small minority to protect your rights when the reasons are based on global sustainability," Sara comments. "Resource exploitation has appropriated the discourse of sustainability, but still it's just aiming to find alternative ways to continue patterns of consumption."

Individual Conflicts

Sara and her kin have personally clashed with the state authorities over its increasingly stringent rules on reindeer management. Previously, Sara's sibling initiated a series of ultimately unsuccessful court actions over the forced culling of his animals, apparently to stop vegetation depletion. As a show of solidarity, Sara developed a extended collection of artworks titled Pile O'Sápmi including a massive curtain of four hundred reindeer skulls, which was exhibited at the 2017's event Documenta 14 and later acquired by the national institution, where it is displayed in the lobby.

Art as Advocacy

For numerous Indigenous people, creative work seems the only domain in which they can be heard by the global community. Recently, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|