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Guests to the renowned gallery are familiar to unexpected displays in its spacious Turbine Hall. They've basked under an artificial sun, slid down spiral slides, and seen automated jellyfish floating through the air. However this marks the first time they will be immersing themselves in the complex nasal chambers of a reindeer. The newest artist commission for this immense space—developed by Native Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—encourages patrons into a winding design based on the enlarged interior of a reindeer's nose passages. Once inside, they can stroll around or relax on reindeer hides, tuning in on earphones to Sámi elders imparting narratives and wisdom.

Focus on the Nasal Passages

What's the focus on the nose? It may appear quirky, but the artwork celebrates a obscure natural marvel: researchers have found that in less than one second, the reindeer's nose can warm the ambient air it inhales by eighty degrees, helping the animal to endure in inhospitable Arctic conditions. Enlarging the nose to bigger than a person, Sara says, "generates a perception of inferiority that you as a human being are not dominant over nature." Sara is a ex- journalist, writer for kids, and environmental activist, who comes from a reindeer-herding family in the far north of Norway. "Maybe that fosters the potential to alter your outlook or spark some humility," she continues.

A Celebration to Sámi Culture

The labyrinthine design is one of several elements in Sara's engaging commission honoring the traditions, science, and philosophy of the Sámi, the sole native group in Europe. Traditionally mobile, the Sámi number roughly 100,000 people spread across northern Norway, Finland, Sweden, and the Kola region (an region they call Sápmi). They've experienced oppression, integration policies, and suppression of their tongue by all four countries. By focusing on the reindeer, an creature at the center of the Sámi mythology and creation story, the art also highlights the community's issues relating to the global warming, loss of territory, and colonialism.

Meaning in Materials

At the long entrance slope, there's a looming, 26-meter structure of skins ensnared by electrical wires. It represents a analogy for the political and economic systems restricting the Sámi. Partly a utility pole, part heavenly staircase, this component of the exhibit, called Goavve-, points to the Sámi word for an harsh environmental condition, whereby dense layers of ice form as changing temperatures melt and refreeze the snow, encasing the reindeers' main cold-season food, lichen. Goavvi is a outcome of planetary warming, which is happening up to much more rapidly in the Polar region than globally.

A few years back, I visited Sara in the Norwegian far north during a goavvi winter and went with Sámi pastoralists on their motorized sleds in chilly conditions as they carried trailers of supplementary feed on to the barren Arctic plains to distribute by hand. The reindeer gathered round us, scratching the slippery ground in futility for mossy pieces. This costly and demanding method is having a drastic impact on reindeer husbandry—and on the animals' independence. Yet the choice is malnutrition. When such conditions become routine, reindeer are perishing—some from hunger, others suffocating after falling into water bodies through thinning ice sheets. In a sense, the work is a monument to them. "Through the stacking of elements, in a way I'm transporting the condition to London," says Sara.

Opposing Perspectives

The installation also emphasizes the clear divergence between the western view of electricity as a commodity to be utilized for gain and survival and the Sámi philosophy of vitality as an innate life force in creatures, humans, and the environment. The gallery's past as a fossil fuel plant is linked with this, as is what the Sámi see as eco-imperialism by Nordic countries. While attempting to be exemplars for sustainable power, these states have clashed with the Sámi over the construction of turbine fields, river barriers, and extraction sites on their native soil; the Sámi contend their legal protections, livelihoods, and traditions are endangered. "It's very difficult being such a tiny group to stand your ground when the reasons are grounded in saving the world," Sara comments. "Extractivism has adopted the language of environmentalism, but yet it's just attempting to find more suitable ways to maintain habits of use."

Personal Conflicts

The artist and her family have personally clashed with the state authorities over its increasingly stringent policies on reindeer management. A few years ago, Sara's sibling embarked on a sequence of ultimately unsuccessful legal cases over the required reduction of his livestock, supposedly to stop vegetation depletion. To back him, Sara created a extended collection of creations called Pile O'Sápmi featuring a massive drape of 400 reindeer skulls, which was exhibited at the 2017 art exhibition Documenta 14 and later obtained by the public gallery, where it hangs in the entrance.

Art as Activism

For numerous Indigenous people, creative work appears the exclusive sphere in which they can be heard by the global community. Two years ago, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|