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Attendees to the renowned gallery are used to unexpected encounters in its vast Turbine Hall. They've relaxed under an artificial sun, descended down spiral slides, and witnessed AI-powered jellyfish hovering through the air. Yet this marks the initial time they will be venturing themselves in the detailed nose passages of a reindeer. The latest artistic project for this immense space—developed by Indigenous Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—encourages gallerygoers into a labyrinthine construction based on the expanded interior of a reindeer's nasal airways. Upon entering, they can meander around or unwind on reindeer hides, tuning in on earphones to tribal seniors telling tales and wisdom.

Focus on the Nasal Passages

Why the nose? It might sound playful, but the installation honors a obscure biological feat: researchers have discovered that in a fraction of a second, the reindeer's nose can raise the temperature of the ambient air it inhales by 80 degrees celsius, allowing the creature to survive in inhospitable Arctic climates. Enlarging the nose to human-scale dimensions, Sara says, "creates a sense of smallness that you as a individual are not superior over nature." The artist is a former journalist, writer for kids, and environmental activist, who hails from a pastoral family in northern Norway. "Maybe that generates the potential to shift your perspective or evoke some modesty," she adds.

A Celebration to Indigenous Heritage

The maze-like installation is part of a features in Sara's immersive commission honoring the traditions, science, and philosophy of the Sámi, Europe's only Indigenous people. Traditionally mobile, the Sámi count approximately 100,000 people spread across the Norwegian north, the Finnish Arctic, the Swedish Lapland, and Russia's Kola Peninsula (an territory they call Sápmi). They have faced discrimination, cultural suppression, and repression of their language by all four countries. With an emphasis on the reindeer, an creature at the center of the Sámi cosmology and origin tale, the installation also draws attention to the community's struggles associated with the global warming, loss of territory, and imperialism.

Meaning in Components

Along the long entrance ramp, there's a towering, eighty-five-foot sculpture of pelts trapped by power and light cables. It represents a analogy for the governance and financial structures restricting the Sámi. Part pylon, part heavenly staircase, this section of the installation, titled Goavve-, relates to the Sámi term for an severe climatic event, wherein thick coatings of ice form as changing conditions melt and solidify again the snow, locking in the reindeers' key winter sustenance, moss. The condition is a result of global heating, which is taking place up to four times faster in the Far North than in other regions.

A few years back, I met with Sara in the Norwegian far north during a goavvi winter and joined Sámi pastoralists on their Arctic vehicles in biting cold as they carried carts of supplementary feed on to the barren Arctic plains to dispense manually. The herd crowded round us, pawing the frozen ground in vain attempts for lichen-covered pieces. This costly and laborious procedure is having a drastic effect on reindeer husbandry—and on the animals' self-sufficiency. However the other option is death. As these icy periods become routine, reindeer are dying—some from starvation, others drowning after plunging into streams through unstable frozen surfaces. On one level, the installation is a monument to them. "By overlapping of components, in a way I'm bringing the goavvi to London," says Sara.

Opposing Worldviews

This artwork also emphasizes the clear divergence between the western interpretation of electricity as a resource to be harnessed for economic benefit and existence and the Sámi worldview of energy as an innate power in animals, people, and land. This venue's legacy as a coal and oil power station is connected to this, as is what the Sámi consider eco-imperialism by regional governments. While attempting to be exemplars for renewable energy, these states have disagreed with the Sámi over the building of turbine fields, river barriers, and digging operations on their native soil; the Sámi contend their human rights, incomes, and traditions are endangered. "It's very difficult being such a limited population to defend yourself when the reasons are grounded in global sustainability," Sara notes. "Resource exploitation has adopted the discourse of ecology, but nonetheless it's just attempting to find alternative ways to continue patterns of use."

Personal Conflicts

The artist and her relatives have themselves clashed with the state authorities over its ever-stricter rules on herding. In 2016, Sara's sibling embarked on a set of ultimately unsuccessful legal cases over the forced culling of his herd, supposedly to stop excessive feeding. In support, Sara developed a four-year collection of creations titled Pile O'Sápmi including a huge drape of numerous cranial remains, which was displayed at the 2017 show Documenta 14 and later acquired by the public gallery, where it is displayed in the entrance.

Art as Activism

For many Sámi, creative work seems the only sphere in which they can be listened to by outsiders. Recently, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|