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Visitors to the renowned gallery are accustomed to surprising encounters in its expansive Turbine Hall. They have basked under an man-made sun, glided down amusement rides, and seen robotic sea creatures floating through the air. Yet this marks the inaugural time they will be immersing themselves in the detailed nose passages of a reindeer. The newest creative installation for this huge space—developed by Indigenous Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—invites visitors into a winding design based on the enlarged interior of a reindeer's nose airways. Inside, they can meander around or relax on pelts, listening on earphones to community leaders imparting narratives and knowledge.

Focus on the Nasal Passages

What's the focus on the nose? It could seem playful, but the exhibit honors a obscure biological feat: researchers have found that in under a second, the reindeer's nose can heat the ambient air it inhales by 80°C, enabling the creature to endure in inhospitable Arctic climates. Enlarging the nose to human-scale dimensions, Sara notes, "creates a sense of smallness that you as a human being are not in control over nature." Sara is a former reporter, writer for kids, and land defender, who hails from a herding family in the far north of Norway. "Perhaps that creates the possibility to alter your viewpoint or evoke some humility," she states.

A Celebration to Traditional Ways

The winding structure is part of a elements in Sara's immersive exhibition showcasing the heritage, knowledge, and philosophy of the Sámi, the continent's original inhabitants. Semi-nomadic, the Sámi total approximately 100,000 people distributed across the Norwegian north, Finland, Sweden, and the Russian Arctic (an area they call Sápmi). They've faced persecution, cultural suppression, and suppression of their language by all four countries. Through highlighting the reindeer, an creature at the center of the Sámi mythology and origin tale, the art also highlights the group's challenges associated with the environmental emergency, property rights, and imperialism.

Metaphor in Elements

Along the extended access ramp, there's a towering, 26-metre formation of pelts entangled by electrical wires. It serves as a symbol for the political and economic systems constraining the Sámi. Like an electrical tower, part spiritual ascent, this component of the artwork, called Goavve-, points to the Sámi name for an harsh environmental condition, in which thick sheets of ice form as fluctuating weather liquefy and solidify again the snow, trapping the reindeers' main cold-season sustenance, lichen. This phenomenon is a result of global heating, which is taking place up to at an accelerated rate in the Far North than in other regions.

Previously, I met with Sara in a remote town during a severe cold period and joined Sámi reindeer keepers on their motorized sleds in freezing temperatures as they hauled trailers of animal nutrition on to the barren frozen landscape to provide manually. The reindeer crowded round us, pawing the slippery ground in vain attempts for lichen-covered bits. This expensive and laborious procedure is having a severe effect on animal rearing—and on the animals' natural survival. Yet the other option is malnutrition. When such conditions become frequent, reindeer are succumbing—a number from lack of food, others submerging after sinking in streams through unstable frozen surfaces. On one level, the work is a tribute to them. "By overlapping of components, in a way I'm transporting the phenomenon to London," says Sara.

Contrasting Belief Systems

The sculpture also emphasizes the stark difference between the western view of energy as a commodity to be harnessed for profit and livelihood and the Sámi outlook of energy as an innate power in animals, people, and nature. This venue's legacy as a industrial facility is tied up in this, as is what the Sámi view as green colonialism by Nordic countries. While attempting to be leaders for renewable energy, Nordic nations have disagreed with the Sámi over the building of turbine fields, hydroelectric dams, and extraction sites on their ancestral land; the Sámi contend their legal protections, ways of life, and way of life are endangered. "It's hard being such a limited population to stand your ground when the justifications are grounded in saving the world," Sara notes. "Mining practices has adopted the language of ecology, but nonetheless it's just attempting to find more suitable ways to persist in patterns of consumption."

Family Struggles

She and her kin have personally conflicted with the state authorities over its tightening policies on reindeer management. A few years ago, Sara's sibling embarked on a series of unsuccessful lawsuits over the required reduction of his animals, supposedly to stop excessive feeding. To back him, Sara created a four-year collection of pieces named Pile O'Sápmi including a huge curtain of numerous animal bones, which was displayed at the the art exhibition Documenta 14 and later obtained by the public gallery, where it is displayed in the entrance.

The Role of Art in Advocacy

For many Sámi, visual expression seems the exclusive domain in which they can be heard by outsiders. Two years ago, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|