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Attendees to the renowned gallery are accustomed to unusual experiences in its expansive Turbine Hall. They have relaxed under an man-made sun, glided down amusement rides, and witnessed automated jellyfish floating through the air. Yet this marks the first time they will be engaging themselves in the detailed nasal passages of a reindeer. The newest artist commission for this immense space—designed by Native Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—invites patrons into a labyrinthine structure inspired by the scaled-up inside of a reindeer's nose passages. Inside, they can wander around or unwind on reindeer hides, listening on earphones to community leaders telling narratives and insights.

Focus on the Nasal Passages

Why the nose? It might seem playful, but the artwork celebrates a obscure natural marvel: scientists have uncovered that in under a second, the reindeer's nose can warm the ambient air it takes in by 80°C, enabling the animal to survive in extreme Arctic temperatures. Enlarging the nose to bigger than a person, Sara notes, "creates a feeling of smallness that you as a person are not dominant over nature." She is a former journalist, children's author, and land defender, who comes from a pastoral family in northern Norway. "Perhaps that generates the chance to shift your viewpoint or spark some modesty," she adds.

A Tribute to Sámi Culture

The winding installation is among various features in Sara's immersive commission showcasing the traditions, understanding, and beliefs of the Sámi, the continent's original inhabitants. Partially migratory, the Sámi count approximately 100,000 people distributed across the Norwegian north, the Finnish Arctic, Sweden, and Russia's Kola Peninsula (an region they call Sápmi). They've endured oppression, integration policies, and repression of their dialect by all four countries. By focusing on the reindeer, an creature at the heart of the Sámi mythology and founding narrative, the work also spotlights the people's challenges associated with the climate crisis, loss of territory, and external control.

Metaphor in Materials

On the lengthy entry ramp, there's a soaring, 26-metre formation of reindeer hides trapped by power and light cables. It serves as a metaphor for the governance and financial structures restricting the Sámi. Part pylon, part spiritual ascent, this component of the artwork, called Goavve-, refers to the Sámi name for an severe climatic event, in which solid coatings of ice form as fluctuating conditions melt and solidify again the snow, encasing the reindeers' key winter nourishment, lichen. The condition is a consequence of climate change, which is taking place up to four times faster in the Arctic than globally.

Three years ago, I met with Sara in Guovdageaidnu during a severe cold period and went with Sámi reindeer keepers on their snowmobiles in biting cold as they carried trailers of animal nutrition on to the barren Arctic plains to distribute by hand. These animals surrounded round us, digging the frozen ground in vain for mossy pieces. This expensive and laborious process is having a severe impact on animal rearing—and on the animals' natural survival. However the choice is starvation. As goavvi winters become frequent, reindeer are succumbing—a number from hunger, others drowning after falling into streams through unstable frozen surfaces. In a sense, the work is a memorial to them. "By overlapping of components, in a way I'm introducing the condition to London," says Sara.

Opposing Worldviews

This artwork also highlights the clear difference between the modern view of electricity as a resource to be exploited for economic benefit and existence and the Sámi philosophy of energy as an innate essence in animals, people, and the environment. The gallery's history as a coal and oil power station is tied up in this, as is what the Sámi consider eco-imperialism by Scandinavian states. In their efforts to be exemplars for renewable energy, Nordic nations have locked horns with the Sámi over the development of turbine fields, water power facilities, and digging operations on their native soil; the Sámi assert their legal protections, ways of life, and culture are threatened. "It's hard being such a tiny group to defend yourself when the reasons are rooted in saving the world," Sara observes. "Mining practices has adopted the language of ecology, but yet it's just aiming to find alternative ways to persist in practices of use."

Personal Challenges

The artist and her family have themselves clashed with the state authorities over its tightening regulations on herding. Previously, Sara's sibling undertook a series of finally failed legal cases over the mandatory slaughter of his herd, supposedly to stop excessive feeding. As a show of solidarity, Sara produced a four-year series of creations titled Pile O'Sápmi including a colossal drape of numerous animal bones, which was exhibited at the 2017 art exhibition Documenta 14 and later purchased by the National Museum of Oslo, where it resides in the entrance.

Art as Activism

For numerous Indigenous people, art seems the exclusive realm in which they can be heard by people of other nations. Recently, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|