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Visitors to the renowned gallery are accustomed to unexpected experiences in its expansive Turbine Hall. They have relaxed under an simulated sun, slid down spiral slides, and observed AI-powered sea creatures floating through the air. Yet this marks the initial time they will be engaging themselves in the intricate nose chambers of a reindeer. The latest artistic project for this huge space—created by Indigenous Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—welcomes gallerygoers into a winding structure modeled after the scaled-up interior of a reindeer's nasal passages. Inside, they can stroll around or chill out on pelts, listening on headphones to community leaders imparting narratives and knowledge.

Why the Nose?

Why choose the nasal structure? It may sound playful, but the installation honors a little-known natural marvel: researchers have found that in under a second, the reindeer's nose can warm the surrounding air it inhales by 80 degrees celsius, enabling the creature to thrive in harsh Arctic conditions. Scaling the nose to bigger than a person, Sara notes, "generates a sense of insignificance that you as a human being are not superior over nature." Sara is a former reporter, children's author, and land defender, who hails from a herding family in the far north of Norway. "Maybe that fosters the possibility to change your outlook or spark some modesty," she states.

A Celebration to Traditional Ways

The labyrinthine design is among various elements in Sara's immersive exhibition celebrating the heritage, knowledge, and worldview of the Sámi, Europe's only Indigenous people. Partially migratory, the Sámi total about 100,000 people spread across northern Norway, the Finnish Arctic, Sweden, and Russia's Kola Peninsula (an territory they call Sápmi). They have experienced oppression, cultural suppression, and eradication of their language by all four states. By focusing on the reindeer, an creature at the core of the Sámi cosmology and origin tale, the installation also spotlights the people's issues connected to the global warming, land dispossession, and imperialism.

Meaning in Components

Along the lengthy entry incline, there's a towering, 26-meter structure of pelts trapped by power and light cables. It can be read as a metaphor for the societal frameworks restricting the Sámi. Partly a utility pole, part heavenly staircase, this section of the installation, called Goavve-, relates to the Sámi term for an extreme weather phenomenon, whereby dense coatings of ice develop as changing temperatures liquefy and solidify again the snow, trapping the reindeers' key cold-season sustenance, fungus. Goavvi is a consequence of global heating, which is happening up to much more rapidly in the Arctic than in other regions.

Previously, I met with Sara in the Norwegian far north during a goavvi winter and accompanied Sámi pastoralists on their Arctic vehicles in freezing temperatures as they carried carts of supplementary feed on to the exposed Arctic plains to provide by hand. The herd surrounded round us, pawing the frozen ground in futility for vegetative bits. This expensive and demanding process is having a drastic effect on animal rearing—and on the animals' natural survival. Yet the choice is starvation. As goavvi winters become routine, reindeer are succumbing—a number from hunger, others submerging after plunging into streams through thinning ice sheets. On one level, the work is a memorial to them. "By overlapping of elements, in a way I'm bringing the condition to London," says Sara.

Diverging Perspectives

The installation also emphasizes the clear difference between the industrial view of energy as a resource to be utilized for profit and survival and the Sámi philosophy of energy as an natural power in animals, people, and nature. This venue's past as a industrial facility is linked with this, as is what the Sámi view as environmental exploitation by Scandinavian states. In their efforts to be leaders for sustainable power, Nordic nations have disagreed with the Sámi over the development of windfarms, water power facilities, and extraction sites on their ancestral land; the Sámi assert their human rights, incomes, and way of life are threatened. "It's hard being such a tiny group to defend yourself when the justifications are based on global sustainability," Sara comments. "Mining practices has appropriated the language of sustainability, but still it's just striving to find more suitable ways to persist in patterns of consumption."

Personal Challenges

The artist and her kin have personally disagreed with the national administration over its ever-stricter rules on animal husbandry. In 2016, Sara's sibling embarked on a sequence of finally failed legal cases over the forced culling of his herd, apparently to stop excessive feeding. To back him, Sara created a multi-year set of creations called Pile O'Sápmi including a colossal screen of four hundred cranial remains, which was shown at the 2017 event Documenta 14 and later purchased by the National Museum of Oslo, where it is displayed in the entrance.

Art as Advocacy

For many Sámi, creative work appears the only domain in which they can be listened to by the global community. Two years ago, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|