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Attendees to the renowned gallery are used to unexpected experiences in its spacious Turbine Hall. They have sunbathed under an man-made sun, slid down spiral slides, and observed robotic jellyfish drifting through the air. But this marks the initial time they will be engaging themselves in the complex nasal chambers of a reindeer. The latest creative installation for this immense space—designed by Indigenous Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—welcomes patrons into a maze-like design inspired by the enlarged inside of a reindeer's nasal cavities. Inside, they can meander around or unwind on reindeer hides, listening on earphones to community leaders telling stories and insights.

Focus on the Nasal Passages

Why choose the nasal structure? It may seem playful, but the installation honors a obscure natural marvel: experts have uncovered that in less than one second, the reindeer's nose can raise the temperature of the incoming air it breathes in by 80 degrees celsius, helping the creature to thrive in harsh Arctic climates. Scaling the nose to larger than human size, Sara says, "produces a feeling of smallness that you as a individual are not dominant over nature." She is a former journalist, young adult author, and land defender, who hails from a reindeer-herding family in the Norwegian Arctic. "Maybe that fosters the chance to alter your perspective or spark some humbleness," she continues.

An Homage to Sámi Culture

The labyrinthine design is among various elements in Sara's engaging art project celebrating the heritage, science, and beliefs of the Sámi, Europe's only Indigenous people. Traditionally mobile, the Sámi number roughly 100,000 people ranged across the Norwegian north, Finland, Sweden, and the Russian Arctic (an area they call Sápmi). They've faced oppression, cultural suppression, and eradication of their language by all four states. With an emphasis on the reindeer, an creature at the heart of the Sámi mythology and founding narrative, the art also highlights the people's challenges relating to the climate crisis, property rights, and external control.

Meaning in Materials

Along the lengthy access slope, there's a soaring, 26-metre sculpture of skins trapped by utility lines. It represents a symbol for the political and economic systems constraining the Sámi. Like an electrical tower, part celestial ladder, this part of the installation, named Goavve-, points to the Sámi term for an extreme weather phenomenon, wherein dense coatings of ice develop as varying weather liquefy and refreeze the snow, encasing the reindeers' primary winter sustenance, moss. The condition is a consequence of climate change, which is occurring up to four times faster in the Far North than globally.

Previously, I met with Sara in Guovdageaidnu during a severe cold period and went with Sámi reindeer keepers on their snowmobiles in freezing temperatures as they transported carts of animal nutrition on to the wind-scoured Arctic plains to provide by hand. These animals crowded round us, digging the slippery ground in vain attempts for vegetative bits. This resource-intensive and laborious procedure is having a severe impact on herding practices—and on the animals' natural survival. However the other option is starvation. When such conditions become routine, reindeer are perishing—a number from lack of food, others drowning after falling into streams through thinning ice sheets. In a sense, the installation is a monument to them. "With the layering of components, in a way I'm introducing the phenomenon to London," says Sara.

Opposing Perspectives

The sculpture also emphasizes the clear contrast between the western interpretation of energy as a resource to be utilized for profit and livelihood and the Sámi worldview of energy as an natural essence in creatures, individuals, and the environment. The gallery's past as a industrial facility is linked with this, as is what the Sámi view as environmental exploitation by Nordic countries. In their efforts to be leaders for clean sources, Nordic nations have locked horns with the Sámi over the development of windfarms, river barriers, and extraction sites on their traditional territory; the Sámi contend their human rights, incomes, and culture are threatened. "It's challenging being such a tiny group to stand your ground when the reasons are rooted in saving the world," Sara notes. "Extractivism has adopted the rhetoric of ecology, but still it's just attempting to find alternative ways to persist in patterns of expenditure."

Family Conflicts

She and her kin have themselves disagreed with the Norwegian government over its ever-stricter rules on reindeer management. Previously, Sara's sibling undertook a series of unsuccessful lawsuits over the mandatory slaughter of his animals, supposedly to stop excessive feeding. In support, Sara produced a multi-year series of artworks named Pile O'Sápmi featuring a massive curtain of numerous animal bones, which was exhibited at the 2017's event Documenta 14 and later acquired by the national institution, where it hangs in the lobby.

The Role of Art in Advocacy

Among the community, visual expression appears the only sphere in which they can be listened to by outsiders. Recently, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|