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Visitors to the renowned gallery are used to unusual displays in its vast Turbine Hall. They've sunbathed under an simulated sun, slid down amusement rides, and witnessed AI-powered sea creatures floating through the air. However this marks the first time they will be venturing themselves in the intricate nasal chambers of a reindeer. The newest creative installation for this huge space—designed by Native Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—welcomes visitors into a maze-like construction modeled after the expanded inside of a reindeer's nasal cavities. Upon entering, they can stroll around or chill out on pelts, tuning in on earphones to tribal seniors imparting stories and knowledge.

The Significance of the Nose

What's the focus on the nose? It might appear whimsical, but the exhibit pays tribute to a obscure natural marvel: experts have discovered that in a fraction of a second, the reindeer's nose can heat the ambient air it breathes in by eighty degrees, enabling the animal to thrive in inhospitable Arctic climates. Expanding the nose to larger than human size, Sara says, "produces a sense of insignificance that you as a person are not in control over nature." The artist is a former writer, writer for kids, and rights advocate, who hails from a herding family in the far north of Norway. "Perhaps that fosters the potential to alter your viewpoint or evoke some humbleness," she states.

A Celebration to Indigenous Heritage

The labyrinthine design is one of several features in Sara's immersive exhibition showcasing the culture, science, and beliefs of the Sámi, the continent's original inhabitants. Traditionally mobile, the Sámi number about 100,000 people distributed across the Norwegian north, Finland, the Swedish Lapland, and the Russian Arctic (an area they call Sápmi). They have endured persecution, forced assimilation, and repression of their dialect by all four nations. Through highlighting the reindeer, an animal at the core of the Sámi cosmology and origin tale, the art also spotlights the group's issues relating to the climate crisis, property rights, and colonialism.

Meaning in Materials

On the long entrance slope, there's a looming, 26-meter formation of skins ensnared by electrical wires. It represents a metaphor for the governance and financial structures constraining the Sámi. Like an electrical tower, part celestial ladder, this component of the exhibit, called Goavve-, refers to the Sámi term for an severe climatic event, in which solid sheets of ice develop as changing conditions thaw and refreeze the snow, encasing the reindeers' primary winter food, lichen. Goavvi is a consequence of climate change, which is happening up to much more rapidly in the Arctic than elsewhere.

A few years back, I traveled to see Sara in the Norwegian far north during a severe cold period and went with Sámi pastoralists on their snowmobiles in chilly conditions as they carried containers of food pellets on to the wind-scoured Arctic plains to distribute manually. The herd surrounded round us, digging the frozen ground in vain for vegetative pieces. This expensive and demanding process is having a drastic effect on reindeer husbandry—and on the animals' natural survival. But the choice is death. As these icy periods become commonplace, reindeer are perishing—some from lack of food, others submerging after sinking in streams through unstable frozen surfaces. In a sense, the art is a tribute to them. "By overlapping of elements, in a way I'm transporting the condition to London," says Sara.

Contrasting Belief Systems

The installation also underscores the clear difference between the modern understanding of electricity as a commodity to be harnessed for gain and existence and the Sámi outlook of energy as an innate life force in creatures, people, and the environment. This venue's history as a industrial facility is connected to this, as is what the Sámi see as eco-imperialism by Scandinavian states. As they strive to be standard bearers for renewable energy, these states have locked horns with the Sámi over the development of wind energy projects, hydroelectric dams, and extraction sites on their ancestral land; the Sámi contend their human rights, incomes, and traditions are endangered. "It's hard being such a small minority to stand your ground when the justifications are grounded in global sustainability," Sara notes. "Extractivism has appropriated the discourse of sustainability, but still it's just striving to find alternative ways to persist in habits of expenditure."

Personal Challenges

Sara and her kin have themselves clashed with the national administration over its increasingly stringent rules on animal husbandry. In 2016, Sara's brother undertook a sequence of finally failed court actions over the mandatory slaughter of his livestock, supposedly to stop excessive feeding. In support, Sara produced a multi-year set of artworks titled Pile O'Sápmi featuring a colossal curtain of 400 cranial remains, which was exhibited at the 2017's event Documenta 14 and later purchased by the public gallery, where it is displayed in the entryway.

The Role of Art in Advocacy

For numerous Indigenous people, art seems the exclusive realm in which they can be understood by the global community. Two years ago, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|