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Guests to the renowned gallery are used to unusual experiences in its spacious Turbine Hall. They have relaxed under an artificial sun, slid down spiral slides, and witnessed robotic sea creatures drifting through the air. However this marks the first time they will be immersing themselves in the detailed nasal chambers of a reindeer. The newest creative installation for this cavernous space—developed by Native Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—welcomes patrons into a winding design modeled after the expanded inside of a reindeer's nasal airways. Once inside, they can wander around or relax on skins, tuning in on headphones to Sámi elders telling narratives and insights.

The Significance of the Nose

What's the focus on the nose? It could sound playful, but the installation pays tribute to a rarely recognized natural marvel: researchers have found that in under a second, the reindeer's nose can raise the temperature of the ambient air it inhales by 80°C, enabling the animal to survive in harsh Arctic conditions. Enlarging the nose to larger than human size, Sara notes, "produces a perception of insignificance that you as a person are not in control over nature." The artist is a ex- writer, young adult author, and land defender, who is from a reindeer-herding family in the far north of Norway. "Possibly that generates the possibility to shift your outlook or evoke some humility," she adds.

An Homage to Traditional Ways

The winding design is among various elements in Sara's absorbing exhibition showcasing the heritage, understanding, and philosophy of the Sámi, the continent's original inhabitants. Partially migratory, the Sámi count about 100,000 people ranged across northern Norway, Finland, Sweden, and Russia's Kola Peninsula (an area they call Sápmi). They've faced discrimination, forced assimilation, and repression of their language by all four countries. By focusing on the reindeer, an creature at the core of the Sámi cosmology and founding narrative, the art also spotlights the group's struggles connected to the climate crisis, property rights, and colonialism.

Meaning in Materials

On the lengthy entrance ramp, there's a looming, 26-metre formation of pelts entangled by utility lines. It can be read as a analogy for the societal frameworks restricting the Sámi. Partly a utility pole, part celestial ladder, this section of the artwork, titled Goavve-, relates to the Sámi name for an severe climatic event, wherein dense coatings of ice form as fluctuating temperatures thaw and ice over the snow, trapping the reindeers' primary cold-season nourishment, fungus. The condition is a consequence of planetary warming, which is occurring up to at an accelerated rate in the Polar region than elsewhere.

Three years ago, I met with Sara in the Norwegian far north during a goavvi winter and accompanied Sámi reindeer keepers on their Arctic vehicles in biting cold as they transported containers of supplementary feed on to the wind-scoured frozen landscape to distribute manually. The herd surrounded round us, pawing the slippery ground in vain attempts for lichen-covered pieces. This costly and labour-intensive method is having a drastic influence on reindeer husbandry—and on the animals' independence. But the other option is malnutrition. When such conditions become commonplace, reindeer are dying—a number from hunger, others suffocating after plunging into lakes and rivers through thinning ice sheets. On one level, the installation is a memorial to them. "With the layering of components, in a way I'm transporting the condition to London," says Sara.

Opposing Perspectives

The sculpture also emphasizes the sharp difference between the modern interpretation of electricity as a resource to be utilized for gain and existence and the Sámi outlook of vitality as an inherent essence in creatures, individuals, and land. The gallery's past as a industrial facility is tied up in this, as is what the Sámi see as green colonialism by Scandinavian states. As they strive to be exemplars for renewable energy, Nordic nations have disagreed with the Sámi over the building of wind energy projects, hydroelectric dams, and extraction sites on their ancestral land; the Sámi assert their legal protections, livelihoods, and traditions are at risk. "It's very difficult being such a tiny group to protect your rights when the reasons are based on global sustainability," Sara notes. "Resource exploitation has co-opted the rhetoric of environmentalism, but yet it's just attempting to find alternative ways to persist in habits of expenditure."

Family Struggles

Sara and her kin have personally conflicted with the state authorities over its tightening rules on reindeer management. In 2016, Sara's brother undertook a series of unsuccessful lawsuits over the required reduction of his animals, apparently to stop overgrazing. As a show of solidarity, Sara created a extended series of pieces titled Pile O'Sápmi featuring a colossal screen of 400 cranial remains, which was shown at the 2017 art exhibition Documenta 14 and later purchased by the national institution, where it hangs in the entrance.

Art as Activism

For numerous Indigenous people, art appears the exclusive realm in which they can be understood by the global community. Recently, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|