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Guests to the renowned gallery are used to unusual experiences in its expansive Turbine Hall. They have sunbathed under an artificial sun, slid down amusement rides, and witnessed automated sea creatures drifting through the air. However this marks the first time they will be venturing themselves in the intricate nasal passages of a reindeer. The newest creative installation for this immense space—created by Indigenous Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—welcomes visitors into a labyrinthine structure based on the scaled-up interior of a reindeer's nose cavities. Once inside, they can wander around or unwind on pelts, listening on earphones to Sámi elders sharing stories and wisdom.

Why the Nose?

Why the nose? It could sound whimsical, but the artwork honors a rarely recognized natural marvel: experts have found that in under a second, the reindeer's nose can warm the ambient air it inhales by eighty degrees, enabling the creature to thrive in harsh Arctic conditions. Scaling the nose to human-scale dimensions, Sara says, "creates a feeling of inferiority that you as a human being are not superior over nature." The artist is a ex- reporter, young adult author, and land defender, who hails from a pastoral family in northern Norway. "Perhaps that creates the possibility to change your perspective or evoke some humility," she adds.

An Homage to Sámi Culture

The labyrinthine structure is among various elements in Sara's absorbing commission honoring the traditions, understanding, and philosophy of the Sámi, the continent's original inhabitants. Traditionally mobile, the Sámi number about 100,000 people ranged across the Norwegian north, Finland, the Swedish Lapland, and Russia's Kola Peninsula (an region they call Sápmi). They've experienced oppression, integration policies, and repression of their dialect by all four states. With an emphasis on the reindeer, an creature at the core of the Sámi mythology and founding narrative, the work also highlights the group's challenges associated with the climate crisis, loss of territory, and external control.

Meaning in Elements

On the long access slope, there's a soaring, 26-metre formation of pelts entangled by utility lines. It represents a metaphor for the societal frameworks constraining the Sámi. Like an electrical tower, part heavenly staircase, this part of the exhibit, called Goavve-, relates to the Sámi word for an severe climatic event, in which dense coatings of ice appear as varying temperatures melt and solidify again the snow, encasing the reindeers' main cold-season nourishment, moss. This phenomenon is a outcome of global heating, which is occurring up to at an accelerated rate in the Arctic than elsewhere.

A few years back, I met with Sara in the Norwegian far north during a goavvi winter and joined Sámi herders on their snowmobiles in biting cold as they hauled carts of supplementary feed on to the wind-scoured frozen landscape to dispense by hand. The reindeer surrounded round us, digging the slippery ground in futility for vegetative pieces. This costly and laborious method is having a significant impact on reindeer husbandry—and on the animals' independence. Yet the choice is starvation. As goavvi winters become frequent, reindeer are succumbing—a number from hunger, others drowning after sinking in streams through prematurely melting ice. To some extent, the art is a memorial to them. "Through the stacking of components, in a way I'm introducing the goavvi to London," says Sara.

Contrasting Belief Systems

The sculpture also highlights the sharp divergence between the modern view of electricity as a resource to be exploited for gain and livelihood and the Sámi philosophy of life force as an innate life force in animals, people, and nature. The gallery's past as a coal and oil power station is connected to this, as is what the Sámi see as eco-imperialism by Scandinavian states. As they strive to be exemplars for clean sources, Nordic nations have clashed with the Sámi over the building of turbine fields, hydroelectric dams, and extraction sites on their traditional territory; the Sámi contend their human rights, incomes, and traditions are threatened. "It's hard being such a small minority to stand your ground when the reasons are grounded in saving the world," Sara notes. "Extractivism has adopted the discourse of environmentalism, but yet it's just aiming to find alternative ways to maintain practices of expenditure."

Individual Challenges

The artist and her family have personally conflicted with the Norwegian government over its increasingly stringent policies on animal husbandry. A few years ago, Sara's sibling undertook a sequence of finally failed lawsuits over the mandatory slaughter of his livestock, supposedly to stop excessive feeding. In support, Sara developed a four-year collection of pieces named Pile O'Sápmi comprising a huge curtain of four hundred cranial remains, which was shown at the 2017's art exhibition Documenta 14 and later acquired by the public gallery, where it is displayed in the entryway.

The Role of Art in Advocacy

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