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Visitors to the renowned gallery are familiar to surprising displays in its vast Turbine Hall. They've relaxed under an artificial sun, glided down amusement rides, and observed AI-powered sea creatures drifting through the air. However this marks the initial time they will be immersing themselves in the intricate nasal cavities of a reindeer. The current artist commission for this immense space—developed by Native Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—invites visitors into a labyrinthine structure modeled after the enlarged interior of a reindeer's nose passages. Once inside, they can stroll around or chill out on pelts, tuning in on earphones to Sámi elders sharing narratives and insights.

The Significance of the Nose

Why choose the nasal structure? It could appear playful, but the exhibit celebrates a little-known natural marvel: researchers have discovered that in a fraction of a second, the reindeer's nose can heat the incoming air it breathes in by 80°C, enabling the creature to survive in extreme Arctic climates. Expanding the nose to bigger than a person, Sara notes, "generates a sense of smallness that you as a individual are not dominant over nature." She is a ex- journalist, writer for kids, and environmental activist, who comes from a herding family in northern Norway. "Maybe that generates the chance to change your outlook or evoke some modesty," she continues.

A Tribute to Traditional Ways

The maze-like installation is one of several features in Sara's immersive art project honoring the culture, understanding, and philosophy of the Sámi, Europe's only Indigenous people. Partially migratory, the Sámi number about 100,000 people ranged across northern Norway, the Finnish Arctic, the Swedish Lapland, and the Kola region (an area they call Sápmi). They've faced oppression, cultural suppression, and eradication of their language by all four nations. With an emphasis on the reindeer, an creature at the center of the Sámi cosmology and founding narrative, the work also spotlights the people's issues associated with the global warming, property rights, and colonialism.

Metaphor in Components

On the long access slope, there's a soaring, 26-metre sculpture of pelts entangled by electrical wires. It represents a analogy for the governance and financial structures constraining the Sámi. Like an electrical tower, part heavenly staircase, this part of the installation, called Goavve-, points to the Sámi name for an harsh environmental condition, wherein thick layers of ice appear as varying temperatures liquefy and ice over the snow, locking in the reindeers' key cold-season sustenance, moss. This phenomenon is a outcome of planetary warming, which is taking place up to four times faster in the Far North than globally.

Previously, I traveled to see Sara in the Norwegian far north during a goavvi winter and joined Sámi pastoralists on their snowmobiles in chilly conditions as they transported carts of animal nutrition on to the barren tundra to dispense manually. The herd surrounded round us, digging the slippery ground in vain attempts for lichen-covered morsels. This resource-intensive and demanding method is having a severe effect on animal rearing—and on the animals' self-sufficiency. But the alternative is malnutrition. When such conditions become frequent, reindeer are perishing—some from lack of food, others submerging after falling into water bodies through thinning ice sheets. To some extent, the installation is a memorial to them. "By overlapping of materials, in a way I'm transporting the phenomenon to London," says Sara.

Contrasting Worldviews

The sculpture also underscores the sharp difference between the industrial interpretation of power as a asset to be exploited for gain and survival and the Sámi worldview of energy as an inherent life force in animals, humans, and the environment. The gallery's past as a industrial facility is linked with this, as is what the Sámi see as eco-imperialism by regional governments. In their efforts to be standard bearers for clean sources, Scandinavian countries have clashed with the Sámi over the building of windfarms, river barriers, and extraction sites on their native soil; the Sámi assert their human rights, ways of life, and way of life are at risk. "It's challenging being such a tiny group to defend yourself when the reasons are rooted in global sustainability," Sara comments. "Resource exploitation has adopted the rhetoric of sustainability, but nonetheless it's just attempting to find alternative ways to maintain habits of consumption."

Family Challenges

She and her relatives have personally disagreed with the national administration over its ever-stricter policies on reindeer management. Previously, Sara's brother embarked on a series of unsuccessful court actions over the forced culling of his livestock, ostensibly to stop overgrazing. In support, Sara produced a multi-year set of creations called Pile O'Sápmi featuring a massive curtain of four hundred reindeer skulls, which was exhibited at the the show Documenta 14 and later obtained by the National Museum of Oslo, where it hangs in the entrance.

Creative Expression as Advocacy

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