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Attendees to the renowned gallery are accustomed to unexpected experiences in its spacious Turbine Hall. They have basked under an man-made sun, glided down amusement rides, and observed automated sea creatures floating through the air. However this marks the inaugural time they will be venturing themselves in the complex nasal chambers of a reindeer. The current artistic project for this immense space—developed by Indigenous Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—welcomes visitors into a maze-like design based on the scaled-up inside of a reindeer's nasal passages. Inside, they can meander around or unwind on pelts, tuning in on headphones to community leaders imparting narratives and insights.

Focus on the Nasal Passages

Why choose the nasal structure? It may appear quirky, but the artwork pays tribute to a little-known scientific wonder: scientists have found that in less than one second, the reindeer's nose can heat the incoming air it takes in by 80°C, enabling the animal to thrive in harsh Arctic temperatures. Expanding the nose to bigger than a person, Sara notes, "creates a perception of inferiority that you as a human being are not superior over nature." The artist is a former reporter, children's author, and rights advocate, who is from a pastoral family in the far north of Norway. "Perhaps that generates the chance to alter your outlook or spark some humbleness," she continues.

A Tribute to Traditional Ways

The winding structure is one of several components in Sara's absorbing art project honoring the heritage, knowledge, and worldview of the Sámi, the continent's original inhabitants. Partially migratory, the Sámi count approximately 100,000 people distributed across the Norwegian north, the Finnish Arctic, the Swedish Lapland, and Russia's Kola Peninsula (an territory they call Sápmi). They have endured persecution, integration policies, and suppression of their tongue by all four countries. Through highlighting the reindeer, an creature at the core of the Sámi belief system and origin tale, the installation also draws attention to the group's challenges connected to the climate crisis, property rights, and imperialism.

Symbolism in Components

At the long entry slope, there's a towering, 26-meter sculpture of pelts trapped by utility lines. It represents a metaphor for the political and economic systems constraining the Sámi. Part pylon, part celestial ladder, this component of the exhibit, titled Goavve-, points to the Sámi term for an harsh environmental condition, wherein solid layers of ice form as fluctuating conditions liquefy and solidify again the snow, locking in the reindeers' primary cold-season food, fungus. The condition is a result of climate change, which is happening up to at an accelerated rate in the Arctic than elsewhere.

A few years back, I met with Sara in Guovdageaidnu during a severe cold period and joined Sámi reindeer keepers on their snowmobiles in biting cold as they hauled carts of animal nutrition on to the barren Arctic plains to dispense by hand. These animals surrounded round us, scratching the frozen ground in futility for vegetative morsels. This resource-intensive and labour-intensive process is having a severe influence on animal rearing—and on the animals' natural survival. Yet the alternative is malnutrition. When such conditions become routine, reindeer are perishing—some from starvation, others drowning after falling into streams through thinning ice sheets. In a sense, the installation is a tribute to them. "By overlapping of elements, in a way I'm introducing the phenomenon to London," says Sara.

Contrasting Worldviews

This artwork also highlights the stark difference between the western view of energy as a asset to be exploited for gain and survival and the Sámi philosophy of energy as an inherent power in creatures, people, and land. This venue's past as a industrial facility is connected to this, as is what the Sámi consider green colonialism by Nordic countries. As they strive to be standard bearers for renewable energy, Nordic nations have locked horns with the Sámi over the development of turbine fields, river barriers, and mines on their native soil; the Sámi argue their legal protections, livelihoods, and culture are endangered. "It's challenging being such a limited population to stand your ground when the arguments are rooted in saving the world," Sara comments. "Extractivism has adopted the language of ecology, but still it's just aiming to find alternative ways to maintain practices of use."

Individual Struggles

The artist and her kin have themselves conflicted with the Norwegian government over its tightening policies on animal husbandry. A few years ago, Sara's brother undertook a sequence of finally failed lawsuits over the mandatory slaughter of his herd, ostensibly to stop overgrazing. To back him, Sara developed a multi-year set of pieces called Pile O'Sápmi featuring a huge drape of four hundred reindeer skulls, which was shown at the the show Documenta 14 and later acquired by the National Museum of Oslo, where it is displayed in the entryway.

The Role of Art in Advocacy

For many Sámi, visual expression appears the only realm in which they can be heard by outsiders. In 2022, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|