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Attendees to the renowned gallery are used to surprising displays in its expansive Turbine Hall. They've basked under an simulated sun, glided down helter skelters, and observed AI-powered sea creatures drifting through the air. However this marks the initial time they will be immersing themselves in the detailed nose cavities of a reindeer. The newest artist commission for this immense space—created by Indigenous Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—encourages visitors into a labyrinthine design modeled after the expanded inside of a reindeer's nasal cavities. Inside, they can meander around or unwind on skins, tuning in on headphones to community leaders telling narratives and wisdom.

The Significance of the Nose

Why choose the nasal structure? It might appear quirky, but the artwork pays tribute to a rarely recognized scientific wonder: scientists have discovered that in a fraction of a second, the reindeer's nose can raise the temperature of the ambient air it inhales by eighty degrees, helping the creature to endure in harsh Arctic conditions. Expanding the nose to larger than human size, Sara says, "produces a sense of smallness that you as a person are not dominant over nature." She is a ex- reporter, writer for kids, and environmental activist, who hails from a herding family in the far north of Norway. "Perhaps that generates the possibility to change your outlook or evoke some humility," she states.

A Tribute to Indigenous Heritage

The maze-like design is one of several elements in Sara's absorbing commission honoring the culture, knowledge, and philosophy of the Sámi, Europe's only Indigenous people. Semi-nomadic, the Sámi total about 100,000 people spread across northern Norway, the Finnish Arctic, Sweden, and the Russian Arctic (an territory they call Sápmi). They have faced persecution, cultural suppression, and repression of their dialect by all four nations. By focusing on the reindeer, an animal at the core of the Sámi mythology and founding narrative, the work also highlights the people's struggles connected to the climate crisis, loss of territory, and external control.

Metaphor in Components

At the lengthy access slope, there's a towering, 26-meter formation of skins ensnared by utility lines. It serves as a symbol for the governance and financial structures constraining the Sámi. Part pylon, part heavenly staircase, this section of the exhibit, named Goavve-, points to the Sámi term for an extreme weather phenomenon, whereby thick sheets of ice form as varying temperatures melt and refreeze the snow, encasing the reindeers' primary winter sustenance, moss. Goavvi is a consequence of global heating, which is occurring up to at an accelerated rate in the Polar region than in other regions.

Previously, I traveled to see Sara in a remote town during a severe cold period and went with Sámi herders on their motorized sleds in chilly conditions as they hauled trailers of animal nutrition on to the barren tundra to distribute through labor. These animals gathered round us, digging the frozen ground in vain for mossy morsels. This expensive and demanding procedure is having a drastic impact on herding practices—and on the animals' natural survival. But the alternative is malnutrition. When such conditions become frequent, reindeer are dying—a number from starvation, others drowning after falling into streams through thinning ice sheets. In a sense, the installation is a tribute to them. "Through the stacking of components, in a way I'm transporting the phenomenon to London," says Sara.

Diverging Worldviews

This artwork also underscores the clear difference between the modern understanding of power as a asset to be harnessed for economic benefit and survival and the Sámi outlook of life force as an natural power in creatures, individuals, and nature. This venue's legacy as a coal and oil power station is connected to this, as is what the Sámi consider environmental exploitation by Scandinavian states. As they strive to be leaders for clean sources, Scandinavian countries have disagreed with the Sámi over the building of turbine fields, water power facilities, and mines on their native soil; the Sámi argue their human rights, livelihoods, and way of life are threatened. "It's hard being such a small minority to protect your rights when the arguments are rooted in global sustainability," Sara comments. "Resource exploitation has co-opted the language of environmentalism, but nonetheless it's just aiming to find better ways to maintain habits of expenditure."

Individual Challenges

She and her family have themselves conflicted with the state authorities over its ever-stricter policies on reindeer management. In 2016, Sara's sibling undertook a sequence of unsuccessful lawsuits over the mandatory slaughter of his animals, apparently to stop overgrazing. As a show of solidarity, Sara developed a extended collection of artworks named Pile O'Sápmi comprising a huge curtain of numerous animal bones, which was shown at the the art exhibition Documenta 14 and later acquired by the National Museum of Oslo, where it is displayed in the entrance.

Art as Awareness

For many Sámi, visual expression is the only domain in which they can be understood by the global community. Two years ago, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|