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Attendees to the renowned gallery are familiar to unusual encounters in its expansive Turbine Hall. They have basked under an artificial sun, slid down helter skelters, and seen AI-powered jellyfish floating through the air. Yet this marks the initial time they will be venturing themselves in the intricate nasal chambers of a reindeer. The latest artistic project for this huge space—designed by Indigenous Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—invites patrons into a labyrinthine structure inspired by the scaled-up interior of a reindeer's nasal airways. Inside, they can stroll around or relax on skins, listening on earphones to tribal seniors sharing narratives and knowledge.

Why the Nose?

What's the focus on the nose? It could appear playful, but the exhibit pays tribute to a rarely recognized biological feat: scientists have discovered that in less than one second, the reindeer's nose can raise the temperature of the incoming air it inhales by eighty degrees, allowing the animal to thrive in extreme Arctic temperatures. Expanding the nose to larger than human size, Sara notes, "generates a feeling of insignificance that you as a human being are not dominant over nature." She is a former writer, writer for kids, and rights advocate, who is from a pastoral family in the far north of Norway. "Perhaps that creates the potential to change your outlook or evoke some humility," she adds.

A Celebration to Traditional Ways

The winding design is among various features in Sara's engaging exhibition showcasing the heritage, knowledge, and beliefs of the Sámi, the sole native group in Europe. Semi-nomadic, the Sámi total approximately 100,000 people ranged across the Norwegian north, Finland, the Swedish Lapland, and the Kola region (an territory they call Sápmi). They have faced persecution, cultural suppression, and repression of their dialect by all four states. With an emphasis on the reindeer, an animal at the core of the Sámi cosmology and origin tale, the art also spotlights the community's issues associated with the global warming, loss of territory, and imperialism.

Metaphor in Components

On the long access incline, there's a looming, 26-metre sculpture of skins trapped by electrical wires. It represents a symbol for the governance and financial structures limiting the Sámi. Part pylon, part heavenly staircase, this component of the installation, called Goavve-, refers to the Sámi name for an extreme weather phenomenon, in which solid coatings of ice develop as changing temperatures liquefy and ice over the snow, trapping the reindeers' key winter sustenance, moss. The condition is a outcome of global heating, which is occurring up to much more rapidly in the Arctic than in other regions.

A few years back, I traveled to see Sara in the Norwegian far north during a severe cold period and went with Sámi herders on their snowmobiles in biting cold as they transported carts of food pellets on to the exposed tundra to provide by hand. The herd surrounded round us, digging the icy ground in vain for mossy morsels. This resource-intensive and labour-intensive method is having a severe effect on herding practices—and on the animals' independence. However the other option is starvation. When such conditions become commonplace, reindeer are succumbing—some from lack of food, others suffocating after sinking in streams through unstable frozen surfaces. In a sense, the work is a tribute to them. "With the layering of components, in a way I'm introducing the condition to London," says Sara.

Opposing Worldviews

This artwork also underscores the stark divergence between the western interpretation of power as a asset to be exploited for profit and livelihood and the Sámi outlook of life force as an innate essence in creatures, people, and land. The gallery's legacy as a coal and oil power station is tied up in this, as is what the Sámi see as environmental exploitation by Nordic countries. As they strive to be standard bearers for renewable energy, Nordic nations have locked horns with the Sámi over the building of turbine fields, river barriers, and mines on their ancestral land; the Sámi argue their fundamental freedoms, livelihoods, and way of life are endangered. "It's challenging being such a tiny group to defend yourself when the reasons are based on saving the world," Sara observes. "Extractivism has co-opted the rhetoric of environmentalism, but yet it's just attempting to find alternative ways to persist in practices of use."

Personal Conflicts

Sara and her family have personally disagreed with the national administration over its tightening policies on animal husbandry. A few years ago, Sara's sibling undertook a sequence of ultimately unsuccessful court actions over the required reduction of his herd, ostensibly to stop overgrazing. In support, Sara produced a multi-year set of pieces called Pile O'Sápmi featuring a massive drape of numerous reindeer skulls, which was displayed at the the show Documenta 14 and later obtained by the public gallery, where it is displayed in the entrance.

The Role of Art in Advocacy

For numerous Indigenous people, creative work appears the only realm in which they can be understood by people of other nations. In 2022, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|