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Attendees to the renowned gallery are familiar to surprising experiences in its vast Turbine Hall. They've relaxed under an man-made sun, descended down amusement rides, and witnessed robotic jellyfish drifting through the air. But this marks the first time they will be venturing themselves in the intricate nose chambers of a reindeer. The current creative installation for this huge space—developed by Indigenous Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—welcomes visitors into a winding structure modeled after the scaled-up interior of a reindeer's nose cavities. Once inside, they can stroll around or relax on skins, listening on headphones to tribal seniors telling stories and insights.

Focus on the Nasal Passages

What's the focus on the nose? It might appear playful, but the installation celebrates a obscure scientific wonder: scientists have discovered that in a fraction of a second, the reindeer's nose can warm the surrounding air it takes in by eighty degrees, helping the creature to endure in inhospitable Arctic conditions. Expanding the nose to bigger than a person, Sara says, "produces a perception of smallness that you as a individual are not superior over nature." The artist is a former journalist, children's author, and rights advocate, who hails from a reindeer-herding family in the Norwegian Arctic. "Possibly that generates the chance to shift your outlook or spark some modesty," she adds.

A Tribute to Indigenous Heritage

The winding design is one of several elements in Sara's immersive art project showcasing the culture, science, and worldview of the Sámi, the continent's original inhabitants. Semi-nomadic, the Sámi total about 100,000 people distributed across northern Norway, the Finnish Arctic, the Swedish Lapland, and the Kola region (an region they call Sápmi). They have experienced discrimination, cultural suppression, and suppression of their language by all four states. Through highlighting the reindeer, an animal at the core of the Sámi belief system and creation story, the installation also draws attention to the community's struggles connected to the climate crisis, land dispossession, and external control.

Metaphor in Elements

At the lengthy entry incline, there's a soaring, eighty-five-foot formation of reindeer hides ensnared by utility lines. It serves as a metaphor for the governance and financial structures constraining the Sámi. Like an electrical tower, part celestial ladder, this part of the artwork, named Goavve-, points to the Sámi term for an extreme weather phenomenon, in which thick coatings of ice develop as changing weather thaw and ice over the snow, locking in the reindeers' key winter food, moss. This phenomenon is a outcome of climate change, which is taking place up to at an accelerated rate in the Arctic than in other regions.

Previously, I met with Sara in the Norwegian far north during a goavvi winter and accompanied Sámi pastoralists on their snowmobiles in biting cold as they carried containers of food pellets on to the exposed frozen landscape to distribute through labor. The herd gathered round us, pawing the slippery ground in vain attempts for lichen-covered morsels. This resource-intensive and labour-intensive process is having a drastic effect on herding practices—and on the animals' natural survival. However the alternative is death. When such conditions become routine, reindeer are dying—some from lack of food, others drowning after falling into lakes and rivers through thinning ice sheets. On one level, the installation is a tribute to them. "By overlapping of components, in a way I'm transporting the phenomenon to London," says Sara.

Opposing Worldviews

The sculpture also emphasizes the sharp difference between the industrial interpretation of power as a resource to be harnessed for economic benefit and survival and the Sámi worldview of vitality as an natural life force in creatures, people, and land. This venue's legacy as a fossil fuel plant is tied up in this, as is what the Sámi view as green colonialism by regional governments. In their efforts to be standard bearers for sustainable power, these states have disagreed with the Sámi over the development of wind energy projects, river barriers, and mines on their ancestral land; the Sámi contend their legal protections, livelihoods, and way of life are threatened. "It's hard being such a small minority to protect your rights when the arguments are based on global sustainability," Sara notes. "Resource exploitation has appropriated the language of sustainability, but still it's just attempting to find alternative ways to persist in practices of expenditure."

Family Conflicts

Sara and her relatives have personally clashed with the national administration over its ever-stricter regulations on reindeer management. Previously, Sara's brother embarked on a series of ultimately unsuccessful legal cases over the forced culling of his livestock, supposedly to stop overgrazing. To back him, Sara created a four-year set of pieces titled Pile O'Sápmi comprising a huge curtain of numerous cranial remains, which was shown at the 2017 art exhibition Documenta 14 and later obtained by the public gallery, where it resides in the lobby.

Art as Activism

For numerous Indigenous people, art is the exclusive sphere in which they can be listened to by outsiders. Two years ago, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|