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Attendees to the renowned gallery are accustomed to surprising displays in its vast Turbine Hall. They've basked under an man-made sun, descended down helter skelters, and witnessed robotic jellyfish hovering through the air. Yet this marks the inaugural time they will be engaging themselves in the intricate nasal chambers of a reindeer. The newest artist commission for this huge space—created by Indigenous Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—invites gallerygoers into a labyrinthine design modeled after the expanded inside of a reindeer's nasal airways. Once inside, they can meander around or chill out on reindeer hides, listening on headphones to Sámi elders sharing stories and knowledge.

Focus on the Nasal Passages

What's the focus on the nose? It could seem playful, but the artwork honors a obscure biological feat: researchers have discovered that in under a second, the reindeer's nose can raise the temperature of the ambient air it inhales by 80°C, enabling the creature to endure in inhospitable Arctic conditions. Scaling the nose to larger than human size, Sara says, "creates a sense of insignificance that you as a human being are not superior over nature." She is a former journalist, children's author, and rights advocate, who comes from a reindeer-herding family in the Norwegian Arctic. "Maybe that fosters the chance to shift your outlook or spark some humbleness," she adds.

An Homage to Sámi Culture

The labyrinthine design is one of several features in Sara's immersive art project showcasing the heritage, knowledge, and philosophy of the Sámi, Europe's only Indigenous people. Semi-nomadic, the Sámi count approximately 100,000 people spread across northern Norway, the Finnish Arctic, the Swedish Lapland, and Russia's Kola Peninsula (an area they call Sápmi). They've experienced discrimination, forced assimilation, and repression of their tongue by all four states. By focusing on the reindeer, an creature at the center of the Sámi mythology and creation story, the work also highlights the group's challenges relating to the climate crisis, land dispossession, and imperialism.

Metaphor in Components

At the extended entrance slope, there's a looming, 26-metre formation of skins entangled by utility lines. It serves as a symbol for the societal frameworks limiting the Sámi. Partly a utility pole, part heavenly staircase, this part of the artwork, called Goavve-, points to the Sámi term for an severe climatic event, in which dense coatings of ice appear as fluctuating temperatures liquefy and solidify again the snow, trapping the reindeers' main cold-season sustenance, moss. This phenomenon is a consequence of climate change, which is happening up to much more rapidly in the Polar region than globally.

Three years ago, I met with Sara in Guovdageaidnu during a severe cold period and accompanied Sámi herders on their motorized sleds in biting cold as they carried containers of animal nutrition on to the wind-scoured tundra to provide through labor. The reindeer surrounded round us, digging the icy ground in vain for mossy morsels. This expensive and labour-intensive process is having a drastic effect on reindeer husbandry—and on the animals' self-sufficiency. However the alternative is death. As goavvi winters become frequent, reindeer are dying—a number from hunger, others suffocating after sinking in lakes and rivers through thinning ice sheets. To some extent, the installation is a tribute to them. "With the layering of elements, in a way I'm bringing the condition to London," says Sara.

Diverging Perspectives

The installation also highlights the stark difference between the western interpretation of power as a asset to be utilized for economic benefit and existence and the Sámi philosophy of energy as an inherent life force in animals, humans, and nature. The gallery's past as a fossil fuel plant is tied up in this, as is what the Sámi consider eco-imperialism by Scandinavian states. In their efforts to be leaders for renewable energy, Scandinavian countries have clashed with the Sámi over the development of wind energy projects, river barriers, and extraction sites on their native soil; the Sámi contend their legal protections, incomes, and way of life are threatened. "It's hard being such a limited population to protect your rights when the reasons are rooted in environmental protection," Sara notes. "Resource exploitation has appropriated the rhetoric of ecology, but nonetheless it's just attempting to find more suitable ways to maintain patterns of expenditure."

Personal Struggles

She and her kin have themselves conflicted with the Norwegian government over its increasingly stringent policies on herding. A few years ago, Sara's brother initiated a series of ultimately unsuccessful court actions over the required reduction of his animals, supposedly to stop overgrazing. As a show of solidarity, Sara developed a four-year series of pieces titled Pile O'Sápmi featuring a massive curtain of numerous cranial remains, which was shown at the 2017's art exhibition Documenta 14 and later obtained by the national institution, where it is displayed in the lobby.

Creative Expression as Awareness

For numerous Indigenous people, creative work seems the sole domain in which they can be understood by the global community. In 2022, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|