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Guests to the renowned gallery are accustomed to unexpected displays in its expansive Turbine Hall. They have relaxed under an simulated sun, glided down spiral slides, and witnessed AI-powered sea creatures floating through the air. But this marks the initial time they will be immersing themselves in the detailed nasal chambers of a reindeer. The latest creative installation for this immense space—created by Indigenous Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—welcomes patrons into a labyrinthine design modeled after the scaled-up interior of a reindeer's nose airways. Upon entering, they can meander around or chill out on skins, tuning in on headphones to community leaders imparting narratives and knowledge.

Focus on the Nasal Passages

What's the focus on the nose? It could seem whimsical, but the artwork pays tribute to a rarely recognized natural marvel: researchers have found that in a fraction of a second, the reindeer's nose can heat the incoming air it breathes in by 80 degrees celsius, allowing the animal to endure in harsh Arctic temperatures. Scaling the nose to larger than human size, Sara explains, "generates a sense of insignificance that you as a human being are not dominant over nature." The artist is a former writer, children's author, and rights advocate, who is from a herding family in the far north of Norway. "Perhaps that fosters the chance to alter your viewpoint or evoke some modesty," she states.

An Homage to Sámi Culture

The labyrinthine installation is part of a components in Sara's immersive art project celebrating the heritage, science, and philosophy of the Sámi, the continent's original inhabitants. Partially migratory, the Sámi total approximately 100,000 people spread across northern Norway, the Finnish Arctic, Sweden, and the Russian Arctic (an region they call Sápmi). They've experienced discrimination, forced assimilation, and suppression of their language by all four countries. By focusing on the reindeer, an animal at the core of the Sámi cosmology and creation story, the installation also draws attention to the community's struggles associated with the environmental emergency, property rights, and colonialism.

Metaphor in Materials

Along the long access ramp, there's a looming, 26-metre sculpture of pelts entangled by electrical wires. It represents a symbol for the governance and financial structures constraining the Sámi. Part pylon, part spiritual ascent, this section of the installation, called Goavve-, points to the Sámi term for an harsh environmental condition, whereby solid coatings of ice form as varying weather thaw and solidify again the snow, encasing the reindeers' main cold-season food, moss. This phenomenon is a outcome of global heating, which is happening up to at an accelerated rate in the Far North than globally.

A few years back, I traveled to see Sara in a remote town during a severe cold period and accompanied Sámi pastoralists on their motorized sleds in chilly conditions as they hauled carts of food pellets on to the wind-scoured frozen landscape to dispense by hand. These animals gathered round us, pawing the slippery ground in vain for mossy bits. This resource-intensive and demanding process is having a severe influence on herding practices—and on the animals' independence. However the alternative is malnutrition. As these icy periods become commonplace, reindeer are succumbing—some from hunger, others suffocating after falling into lakes and rivers through thinning ice sheets. To some extent, the work is a monument to them. "Through the stacking of materials, in a way I'm bringing the goavvi to London," says Sara.

Contrasting Perspectives

The installation also underscores the stark divergence between the industrial interpretation of electricity as a resource to be harnessed for economic benefit and existence and the Sámi philosophy of vitality as an natural life force in animals, individuals, and nature. This venue's past as a fossil fuel plant is linked with this, as is what the Sámi see as environmental exploitation by Nordic countries. In their efforts to be exemplars for clean sources, Nordic nations have disagreed with the Sámi over the building of windfarms, hydroelectric dams, and extraction sites on their traditional territory; the Sámi contend their fundamental freedoms, ways of life, and traditions are threatened. "It's very difficult being such a tiny group to defend yourself when the justifications are rooted in saving the world," Sara notes. "Resource exploitation has co-opted the language of environmentalism, but nonetheless it's just aiming to find alternative ways to persist in patterns of use."

Family Struggles

She and her family have themselves disagreed with the national administration over its tightening regulations on reindeer management. Previously, Sara's sibling embarked on a sequence of finally failed legal cases over the required reduction of his livestock, ostensibly to stop vegetation depletion. As a show of solidarity, Sara developed a four-year collection of creations titled Pile O'Sápmi including a massive curtain of four hundred reindeer skulls, which was displayed at the 2017's event Documenta 14 and later obtained by the National Museum of Oslo, where it resides in the entryway.

Creative Expression as Awareness

Among the community, creative work is the only domain in which they can be understood by outsiders. Two years ago, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|