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Attendees to the renowned gallery are used to unusual encounters in its expansive Turbine Hall. They have relaxed under an artificial sun, slid down amusement rides, and witnessed robotic sea creatures floating through the air. Yet this marks the first time they will be venturing themselves in the detailed nasal cavities of a reindeer. The latest creative installation for this immense space—created by Native Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—encourages visitors into a labyrinthine construction inspired by the enlarged inside of a reindeer's nose airways. Upon entering, they can stroll around or relax on reindeer hides, listening on headphones to community leaders telling tales and wisdom.

Focus on the Nasal Passages

What's the focus on the nose? It may appear whimsical, but the installation pays tribute to a obscure natural marvel: researchers have uncovered that in under a second, the reindeer's nose can warm the ambient air it breathes in by 80 degrees celsius, helping the animal to thrive in extreme Arctic conditions. Scaling the nose to human-scale dimensions, Sara says, "produces a perception of insignificance that you as a person are not in control over nature." She is a former reporter, children's author, and environmental activist, who is from a reindeer-herding family in the far north of Norway. "Maybe that generates the potential to alter your viewpoint or trigger some humbleness," she continues.

A Tribute to Sámi Culture

The labyrinthine design is part of a elements in Sara's immersive art project honoring the culture, knowledge, and beliefs of the Sámi, Europe's only Indigenous people. Semi-nomadic, the Sámi number about 100,000 people spread across northern Norway, the Finnish Arctic, the Swedish Lapland, and Russia's Kola Peninsula (an territory they call Sápmi). They've faced oppression, integration policies, and repression of their dialect by all four countries. By focusing on the reindeer, an creature at the heart of the Sámi cosmology and creation story, the art also draws attention to the people's struggles associated with the environmental emergency, property rights, and imperialism.

Metaphor in Components

At the extended access incline, there's a soaring, 26-metre structure of reindeer hides ensnared by electrical wires. It serves as a symbol for the governance and financial structures constraining the Sámi. Partly a utility pole, part spiritual ascent, this part of the exhibit, titled Goavve-, points to the Sámi term for an extreme weather phenomenon, in which thick coatings of ice develop as changing weather liquefy and refreeze the snow, locking in the reindeers' key cold-season food, lichen. Goavvi is a outcome of global heating, which is occurring up to at an accelerated rate in the Polar region than elsewhere.

Previously, I traveled to see Sara in Guovdageaidnu during a goavvi winter and joined Sámi pastoralists on their snowmobiles in biting cold as they carried trailers of supplementary feed on to the wind-scoured Arctic plains to dispense by hand. The reindeer surrounded round us, scratching the frozen ground in vain attempts for lichen-covered pieces. This costly and labour-intensive procedure is having a significant impact on animal rearing—and on the animals' natural survival. Yet the alternative is death. As these icy periods become routine, reindeer are dying—some from lack of food, others submerging after falling into streams through unstable frozen surfaces. On one level, the installation is a tribute to them. "With the layering of elements, in a way I'm transporting the goavvi to London," says Sara.

Diverging Worldviews

The sculpture also underscores the sharp difference between the modern understanding of power as a commodity to be utilized for gain and livelihood and the Sámi worldview of vitality as an innate power in creatures, humans, and land. The gallery's history as a coal and oil power station is tied up in this, as is what the Sámi view as green colonialism by Scandinavian states. In their efforts to be leaders for clean sources, Nordic nations have clashed with the Sámi over the building of turbine fields, water power facilities, and mines on their traditional territory; the Sámi contend their fundamental freedoms, ways of life, and way of life are at risk. "It's hard being such a limited population to defend yourself when the reasons are based on global sustainability," Sara notes. "Mining practices has co-opted the discourse of ecology, but still it's just aiming to find better ways to continue patterns of consumption."

Individual Struggles

The artist and her relatives have personally conflicted with the Norwegian government over its ever-stricter policies on reindeer management. In 2016, Sara's brother embarked on a series of finally failed lawsuits over the mandatory slaughter of his animals, supposedly to stop overgrazing. To back him, Sara created a four-year series of artworks named Pile O'Sápmi including a huge curtain of numerous cranial remains, which was displayed at the 2017 event Documenta 14 and later acquired by the National Museum of Oslo, where it is displayed in the lobby.

Art as Advocacy

For many Sámi, art appears the only realm in which they can be understood by the global community. In 2022, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|