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Guests to the renowned gallery are familiar to surprising encounters in its vast Turbine Hall. They have relaxed under an man-made sun, descended down spiral slides, and observed automated sea creatures hovering through the air. However this marks the initial time they will be venturing themselves in the complex nose chambers of a reindeer. The current creative installation for this huge space—created by Indigenous Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—invites gallerygoers into a winding construction based on the expanded interior of a reindeer's nose airways. Upon entering, they can wander around or unwind on pelts, tuning in on earphones to Sámi elders telling narratives and insights.

Why the Nose?

Why choose the nasal structure? It may appear quirky, but the artwork pays tribute to a little-known natural marvel: experts have discovered that in under a second, the reindeer's nose can raise the temperature of the surrounding air it inhales by 80 degrees celsius, helping the animal to thrive in inhospitable Arctic temperatures. Enlarging the nose to bigger than a person, Sara explains, "generates a perception of insignificance that you as a person are not dominant over nature." The artist is a former journalist, young adult author, and environmental activist, who is from a pastoral family in the Norwegian Arctic. "Perhaps that fosters the possibility to change your outlook or trigger some humbleness," she continues.

A Tribute to Sámi Culture

The winding design is among various features in Sara's engaging exhibition showcasing the heritage, understanding, and beliefs of the Sámi, the sole native group in Europe. Semi-nomadic, the Sámi number approximately 100,000 people distributed across the Norwegian north, the Finnish Arctic, Sweden, and the Russian Arctic (an territory they call Sápmi). They've faced persecution, integration policies, and repression of their tongue by all four nations. With an emphasis on the reindeer, an creature at the heart of the Sámi mythology and creation story, the installation also spotlights the group's struggles relating to the climate crisis, loss of territory, and imperialism.

Symbolism in Elements

At the lengthy entry ramp, there's a looming, 26-meter sculpture of pelts entangled by utility lines. It serves as a metaphor for the political and economic systems constraining the Sámi. Part pylon, part celestial ladder, this component of the exhibit, titled Goavve-, relates to the Sámi word for an harsh environmental condition, whereby dense sheets of ice form as varying weather liquefy and refreeze the snow, encasing the reindeers' main winter sustenance, lichen. This phenomenon is a consequence of planetary warming, which is occurring up to four times faster in the Polar region than elsewhere.

A few years back, I traveled to see Sara in Guovdageaidnu during a goavvi winter and accompanied Sámi herders on their snowmobiles in chilly conditions as they transported carts of supplementary feed on to the exposed tundra to distribute through labor. The herd crowded round us, pawing the frozen ground in vain for mossy pieces. This costly and labour-intensive procedure is having a severe impact on reindeer husbandry—and on the animals' self-sufficiency. However the alternative is starvation. As goavvi winters become commonplace, reindeer are dying—some from lack of food, others submerging after sinking in lakes and rivers through thinning ice sheets. On one level, the art is a tribute to them. "With the layering of elements, in a way I'm introducing the goavvi to London," says Sara.

Diverging Belief Systems

The sculpture also emphasizes the clear contrast between the industrial view of power as a asset to be utilized for profit and survival and the Sámi outlook of vitality as an inherent essence in animals, people, and nature. This venue's history as a coal and oil power station is tied up in this, as is what the Sámi see as green colonialism by Scandinavian states. In their efforts to be leaders for sustainable power, these states have disagreed with the Sámi over the building of wind energy projects, hydroelectric dams, and digging operations on their traditional territory; the Sámi argue their fundamental freedoms, livelihoods, and way of life are endangered. "It's challenging being such a limited population to stand your ground when the arguments are based on global sustainability," Sara comments. "Extractivism has co-opted the discourse of environmentalism, but yet it's just attempting to find more suitable ways to continue habits of consumption."

Family Challenges

The artist and her family have themselves disagreed with the Norwegian government over its increasingly stringent regulations on herding. Previously, Sara's brother undertook a sequence of finally failed court actions over the forced culling of his herd, ostensibly to stop vegetation depletion. As a show of solidarity, Sara produced a multi-year collection of artworks called Pile O'Sápmi comprising a colossal screen of four hundred animal bones, which was exhibited at the 2017 show Documenta 14 and later obtained by the National Museum of Oslo, where it resides in the entrance.

Art as Awareness

Among the community, creative work is the sole sphere in which they can be understood by outsiders. Two years ago, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|