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Guests to the renowned gallery are accustomed to surprising encounters in its vast Turbine Hall. They've sunbathed under an man-made sun, descended down amusement rides, and observed automated jellyfish floating through the air. But this marks the inaugural time they will be immersing themselves in the detailed nasal cavities of a reindeer. The newest artistic project for this huge space—created by Indigenous Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—invites visitors into a maze-like design inspired by the scaled-up interior of a reindeer's nasal airways. Upon entering, they can meander around or unwind on skins, tuning in on headphones to tribal seniors telling tales and knowledge.

Focus on the Nasal Passages

Why choose the nasal structure? It might appear whimsical, but the artwork celebrates a obscure biological feat: experts have uncovered 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 harsh Arctic conditions. Expanding the nose to larger than human size, Sara explains, "produces a sense of smallness that you as a person are not superior over nature." Sara is a ex- reporter, young adult author, and rights advocate, who comes from a herding family in northern Norway. "Maybe that fosters the chance to shift your viewpoint or evoke some modesty," she adds.

A Tribute to Sámi Culture

The maze-like structure is among various features in Sara's absorbing commission celebrating the heritage, science, and beliefs of the Sámi, Europe's only Indigenous people. Semi-nomadic, the Sámi count approximately 100,000 people distributed across the Norwegian north, Finland, the Swedish Lapland, and Russia's Kola Peninsula (an area they call Sápmi). They've endured oppression, cultural suppression, and eradication of their tongue by all four nations. With an emphasis on the reindeer, an animal at the core of the Sámi cosmology and origin tale, the work also draws attention to the community's issues relating to the environmental emergency, property rights, and imperialism.

Symbolism in Materials

On the long entrance ramp, there's a soaring, eighty-five-foot sculpture of pelts entangled by power and light cables. It can be read as a symbol for the societal frameworks limiting the Sámi. Partly a utility pole, part spiritual ascent, this component of the exhibit, named Goavve-, refers to the Sámi term for an extreme weather phenomenon, in which thick coatings of ice form as fluctuating temperatures thaw and refreeze the snow, locking in the reindeers' main cold-season sustenance, fungus. This phenomenon is a result of climate change, which is happening up to much more rapidly in the Polar region than elsewhere.

Three years ago, I visited Sara in a remote town during a goavvi winter and went with Sámi reindeer keepers on their snowmobiles in chilly conditions as they transported containers of food pellets on to the exposed Arctic plains to provide through labor. The reindeer gathered round us, pawing the icy ground in vain attempts for vegetative bits. This resource-intensive and laborious process is having a drastic effect on animal rearing—and on the animals' natural survival. Yet the alternative is death. When such conditions become commonplace, reindeer are succumbing—some from lack of food, others drowning after falling into streams through unstable frozen surfaces. To some extent, the installation is a tribute to them. "Through the stacking of components, in a way I'm bringing the goavvi to London," says Sara.

Diverging Worldviews

This artwork also emphasizes the sharp difference between the modern interpretation of power as a resource to be harnessed for economic benefit and livelihood and the Sámi philosophy of vitality as an innate power in animals, humans, and nature. This venue's history as a fossil fuel plant is connected to this, as is what the Sámi consider green colonialism by Nordic countries. As they strive to be standard bearers for renewable energy, Nordic nations have disagreed with the Sámi over the building of windfarms, river barriers, and mines on their ancestral land; the Sámi assert their fundamental freedoms, livelihoods, and culture are endangered. "It's hard being such a limited population to protect your rights when the arguments are rooted in environmental protection," Sara comments. "Mining practices has adopted the language of environmentalism, but still it's just aiming to find better ways to persist in practices of consumption."

Individual Conflicts

The artist and her kin have themselves clashed with the Norwegian government over its increasingly stringent regulations on reindeer management. Previously, Sara's brother initiated a series of unsuccessful lawsuits over the forced culling of his livestock, supposedly to stop excessive feeding. To back him, Sara created a multi-year collection of creations named Pile O'Sápmi featuring a colossal curtain of four hundred reindeer skulls, which was shown at the 2017 show Documenta 14 and later purchased by the public gallery, where it is displayed in the entryway.

Art as Activism

Among the community, visual expression seems the sole domain in which they can be understood by people of other nations. In 2022, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|