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Attendees to the renowned gallery are familiar to unexpected experiences in its spacious Turbine Hall. They have sunbathed under an artificial sun, slid down helter skelters, and witnessed automated sea creatures hovering through the air. Yet this marks the first time they will be immersing themselves in the complex nose chambers of a reindeer. The latest creative installation for this cavernous space—created by Indigenous Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—welcomes patrons into a winding construction based on the enlarged interior of a reindeer's nose airways. Upon entering, they can wander around or unwind on skins, listening on headphones to community leaders sharing tales and insights.

The Significance of the Nose

Why choose the nasal structure? It might sound quirky, but the installation celebrates a rarely recognized biological feat: scientists have uncovered that in under a second, the reindeer's nose can raise the temperature of the ambient air it breathes in by eighty degrees, allowing the creature to thrive in harsh Arctic temperatures. Expanding the nose to larger than human size, Sara explains, "creates a feeling of smallness that you as a person are not in control over nature." Sara is a former journalist, writer for kids, and environmental activist, who comes from a herding family in the Norwegian Arctic. "Maybe that generates the chance to shift your viewpoint or evoke some humbleness," she continues.

A Tribute to Indigenous Heritage

The labyrinthine design is part of a components in Sara's absorbing exhibition honoring the traditions, science, and beliefs of the Sámi, the continent's original inhabitants. Partially migratory, the Sámi total roughly 100,000 people ranged across the Norwegian north, the Finnish Arctic, Sweden, and Russia's Kola Peninsula (an region they call Sápmi). They have endured oppression, integration policies, and suppression of their tongue by all four nations. By focusing on the reindeer, an animal at the heart of the Sámi cosmology and origin tale, the work also draws attention to the group's struggles relating to the environmental emergency, loss of territory, and imperialism.

Meaning in Materials

On the lengthy entrance incline, there's a looming, 26-metre formation of skins trapped by utility lines. It serves as a symbol for the societal frameworks limiting the Sámi. Partly a utility pole, part heavenly staircase, this section of the artwork, titled Goavve-, relates to the Sámi term for an severe climatic event, whereby solid sheets of ice appear as changing conditions liquefy and ice over the snow, locking in the reindeers' primary cold-season nourishment, moss. Goavvi is a outcome of planetary warming, which is occurring up to at an accelerated rate in the Arctic than elsewhere.

A few years back, I visited Sara in the Norwegian far north during a goavvi winter and joined Sámi pastoralists on their Arctic vehicles in biting cold as they hauled containers of animal nutrition on to the wind-scoured Arctic plains to provide by hand. The reindeer gathered round us, pawing the frozen ground in vain for lichen-covered morsels. This expensive and laborious procedure is having a significant effect on reindeer husbandry—and on the animals' self-sufficiency. Yet the other option is malnutrition. When such conditions become commonplace, reindeer are succumbing—some from hunger, others submerging after plunging into lakes and rivers through prematurely melting ice. On one level, the work is a memorial to them. "By overlapping of materials, in a way I'm transporting the phenomenon to London," says Sara.

Contrasting Belief Systems

This artwork also emphasizes the sharp contrast between the modern understanding of power as a asset to be exploited for economic benefit and existence and the Sámi outlook of vitality as an inherent life force in creatures, people, and the environment. The gallery's history as a industrial facility is tied up in this, as is what the Sámi consider eco-imperialism by regional governments. In their efforts to be leaders for renewable energy, Scandinavian countries have clashed with the Sámi over the construction of windfarms, hydroelectric dams, and extraction sites on their ancestral land; the Sámi argue their fundamental freedoms, livelihoods, and culture are endangered. "It's challenging being such a tiny group to stand your ground when the justifications are grounded in environmental protection," Sara notes. "Resource exploitation has appropriated the discourse of ecology, but still it's just striving to find alternative ways to continue habits of use."

Individual Challenges

Sara and her family have themselves conflicted with the Norwegian government over its ever-stricter rules on reindeer management. Previously, Sara's brother embarked on a set of unsuccessful lawsuits over the required reduction of his herd, ostensibly to stop vegetation depletion. As a show of solidarity, Sara developed a multi-year set of pieces titled Pile O'Sápmi including a colossal curtain of 400 animal bones, which was exhibited at the the event Documenta 14 and later acquired by the National Museum of Oslo, where it resides in the entrance.

Creative Expression as Awareness

For numerous Indigenous people, art appears the sole domain in which they can be heard by people of other nations. In 2022, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|