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Guests to the renowned gallery are used to surprising encounters in its vast Turbine Hall. They've sunbathed under an simulated sun, glided down amusement rides, and observed robotic jellyfish drifting through the air. But this marks the inaugural time they will be immersing themselves in the complex nasal passages of a reindeer. The current artistic project for this cavernous space—developed by Native Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—encourages visitors into a winding construction modeled after the scaled-up interior of a reindeer's nose cavities. Once inside, they can meander around or relax on reindeer hides, listening on headphones to Sámi elders telling narratives and insights.

Why the Nose?

What's the focus on the nose? It could seem quirky, but the installation honors a little-known natural marvel: experts have uncovered that in less than one second, the reindeer's nose can warm the ambient air it inhales by 80 degrees celsius, enabling the animal to thrive in harsh Arctic climates. Scaling the nose to human-scale dimensions, Sara explains, "produces a sense of smallness that you as a individual are not in control over nature." The artist is a former writer, young adult author, and land defender, who is from a pastoral family in the far north of Norway. "Perhaps that fosters the potential to change your outlook or spark some humbleness," she states.

A Celebration to Indigenous Heritage

The maze-like structure is part of a components in Sara's engaging commission honoring the culture, understanding, and worldview of the Sámi, the continent's original inhabitants. Traditionally mobile, the Sámi count approximately 100,000 people distributed across northern Norway, Finland, the Swedish Lapland, and Russia's Kola Peninsula (an region they call Sápmi). They have endured discrimination, integration policies, and suppression of their tongue by all four nations. By focusing on the reindeer, an creature at the heart of the Sámi mythology and creation story, the art also spotlights the group's challenges relating to the global warming, loss of territory, and imperialism.

Symbolism in Elements

Along the lengthy entry incline, there's a soaring, 26-metre formation of pelts trapped by power and light cables. It serves as a metaphor for the political and economic systems restricting the Sámi. Partly a utility pole, part celestial ladder, this section of the artwork, named Goavve-, refers to the Sámi name for an harsh environmental condition, whereby thick sheets of ice form as varying weather liquefy and ice over the snow, trapping the reindeers' key cold-season nourishment, moss. The condition is a result of global heating, which is taking place up to much more rapidly in the Arctic than globally.

A few years back, I visited Sara in a remote town during a severe cold period and went with Sámi reindeer keepers on their Arctic vehicles in chilly conditions as they carried carts of food pellets on to the exposed tundra to distribute by hand. The reindeer crowded round us, digging the slippery ground in futility for vegetative bits. This expensive and laborious process is having a severe influence on reindeer husbandry—and on the animals' natural survival. But the other option is death. As goavvi winters become routine, reindeer are perishing—some from starvation, others submerging after sinking in lakes and rivers through thinning ice sheets. In a sense, the art is a tribute to them. "With the layering of materials, in a way I'm introducing the goavvi to London," says Sara.

Contrasting Worldviews

This artwork also highlights the sharp contrast between the industrial interpretation of electricity as a commodity to be utilized for profit and existence and the Sámi worldview of life force as an innate life force in animals, people, and land. The gallery's legacy as a fossil fuel plant is tied up in this, as is what the Sámi see as environmental exploitation by Scandinavian states. While attempting to be leaders for clean sources, these states have clashed with the Sámi over the building of windfarms, hydroelectric dams, and mines on their traditional territory; the Sámi argue their legal protections, livelihoods, and traditions are threatened. "It's challenging being such a small minority to protect your rights when the arguments are based on global sustainability," Sara observes. "Resource exploitation has co-opted the rhetoric of ecology, but nonetheless it's just attempting to find better ways to persist in patterns of expenditure."

Personal Challenges

She and her family have themselves conflicted with the state authorities over its tightening regulations on animal husbandry. A few years ago, Sara's sibling embarked on a series of unsuccessful legal cases over the mandatory slaughter of his animals, apparently to stop excessive feeding. To back him, Sara created a four-year set of artworks called Pile O'Sápmi including a huge drape of four hundred animal bones, which was shown at the the art exhibition Documenta 14 and later acquired by the national institution, where it is displayed in the entrance.

The Role of Art in Activism

For numerous Indigenous people, creative work seems the only domain in which they can be heard by outsiders. Two years ago, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|