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Visitors to the renowned gallery are accustomed to surprising displays in its vast Turbine Hall. They've basked under an artificial sun, descended down amusement rides, and witnessed robotic jellyfish hovering through the air. However this marks the first time they will be venturing themselves in the detailed nasal passages of a reindeer. The newest artist commission for this immense space—developed by Native Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—encourages gallerygoers into a winding structure modeled after the expanded interior of a reindeer's nasal airways. Inside, they can stroll around or relax on reindeer hides, listening on headphones to community leaders sharing narratives and wisdom.

Why the Nose?

What's the focus on the nose? It could sound quirky, but the installation pays tribute to a little-known biological feat: scientists have uncovered that in under a second, the reindeer's nose can warm the incoming air it inhales by 80°C, helping the animal to endure in harsh Arctic climates. Scaling the nose to larger than human size, Sara says, "generates a feeling of smallness that you as a human being are not dominant over nature." The artist is a former reporter, writer for kids, and rights advocate, who is from a reindeer-herding family in the far north of Norway. "Perhaps that generates the possibility to shift your viewpoint or spark some modesty," she states.

An Homage to Sámi Culture

The maze-like installation is part of a components in Sara's engaging exhibition showcasing the traditions, understanding, and beliefs of the Sámi, the sole native group in Europe. Traditionally mobile, the Sámi number about 100,000 people ranged across northern Norway, Finland, the Swedish Lapland, and Russia's Kola Peninsula (an territory they call Sápmi). They have experienced oppression, cultural suppression, and suppression of their dialect by all four countries. With an emphasis on the reindeer, an animal at the center of the Sámi cosmology and founding narrative, the art also spotlights the community's challenges associated with the global warming, land dispossession, and imperialism.

Meaning in Elements

At the lengthy entry slope, there's a soaring, 26-meter structure of reindeer hides ensnared by electrical wires. It serves as a analogy for the political and economic systems constraining the Sámi. Part pylon, part heavenly staircase, this section of the artwork, titled Goavve-, refers to the Sámi term for an severe climatic event, in which thick coatings of ice develop as varying weather liquefy and ice over the snow, encasing the reindeers' key cold-season sustenance, fungus. Goavvi is a consequence of global heating, which is taking place up to at an accelerated rate in the Arctic than in other regions.

Previously, I visited Sara in Guovdageaidnu during a severe cold period and joined Sámi pastoralists on their motorized sleds in freezing temperatures as they hauled trailers of food pellets on to the barren frozen landscape to distribute manually. These animals crowded round us, scratching the frozen ground in vain for mossy morsels. This expensive and labour-intensive method is having a drastic effect on animal rearing—and on the animals' natural survival. Yet the choice is death. As these icy periods become commonplace, reindeer are perishing—some from lack of food, others suffocating after falling into water bodies through prematurely melting ice. In a sense, the work is a tribute to them. "By overlapping of elements, in a way I'm bringing the condition to London," says Sara.

Contrasting Perspectives

The installation also highlights the stark divergence between the western understanding of energy as a resource to be harnessed for gain and existence and the Sámi philosophy of energy as an innate essence in animals, humans, and the environment. This venue's legacy as a fossil fuel plant is tied up in this, as is what the Sámi see as environmental exploitation by Scandinavian states. As they strive to be exemplars for clean sources, Scandinavian countries have disagreed with the Sámi over the construction of wind energy projects, hydroelectric dams, and extraction sites on their traditional territory; the Sámi assert their legal protections, incomes, and culture are threatened. "It's hard being such a small minority to defend yourself when the arguments are based on global sustainability," Sara observes. "Resource exploitation has adopted the language of sustainability, but nonetheless it's just attempting to find better ways to continue habits of expenditure."

Personal Struggles

She and her family have personally disagreed with the national administration over its ever-stricter regulations on animal husbandry. A few years ago, Sara's brother initiated a sequence of finally failed court actions over the forced culling of his herd, ostensibly to stop excessive feeding. As a show of solidarity, Sara produced a extended set of creations titled Pile O'Sápmi including a huge screen of 400 animal bones, which was displayed at the 2017's show Documenta 14 and later obtained by the national institution, where it resides in the entrance.

Creative Expression as Activism

Among the community, visual expression seems the exclusive domain in which they can be understood by the global community. Recently, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|