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Visitors to the renowned gallery are accustomed to unusual experiences in its spacious Turbine Hall. They have sunbathed under an artificial sun, descended down amusement rides, and witnessed automated sea creatures floating through the air. However this marks the inaugural time they will be immersing themselves in the complex nose cavities of a reindeer. The newest artist commission for this immense space—designed by Indigenous Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—welcomes gallerygoers into a winding construction based on the scaled-up inside of a reindeer's nasal cavities. Inside, they can stroll around or chill out on pelts, tuning in on earphones to Sámi elders telling stories and insights.

Focus on the Nasal Passages

Why choose the nasal structure? It may seem whimsical, but the artwork celebrates a rarely recognized natural marvel: scientists have discovered that in less than one second, the reindeer's nose can raise the temperature of the surrounding air it takes in by 80°C, allowing the animal to survive in extreme Arctic conditions. Enlarging the nose to larger than human size, Sara explains, "creates a feeling of smallness that you as a human being are not dominant over nature." Sara is a former reporter, children's author, and rights advocate, who hails from a reindeer-herding family in northern Norway. "Possibly that creates the possibility to alter your viewpoint or spark some humbleness," she adds.

An Homage to Indigenous Heritage

The winding installation is among various elements in Sara's engaging art project honoring the heritage, understanding, and philosophy of the Sámi, the sole native group in Europe. Traditionally mobile, the Sámi number about 100,000 people spread across the Norwegian north, Finland, the Swedish Lapland, and the Kola region (an territory they call Sápmi). They've faced oppression, forced assimilation, and eradication of their language by all four nations. With an emphasis on the reindeer, an creature at the core of the Sámi mythology and creation story, the work also draws attention to the people's challenges connected to the global warming, land dispossession, and imperialism.

Metaphor in Elements

Along the extended access slope, there's a towering, 26-metre structure of reindeer hides entangled by utility lines. It serves as a analogy for the governance and financial structures constraining the Sámi. Partly a utility pole, part heavenly staircase, this section of the installation, called Goavve-, refers to the Sámi word for an severe climatic event, whereby dense sheets of ice form as varying temperatures liquefy and ice over the snow, trapping the reindeers' key winter sustenance, moss. Goavvi is a result of climate change, which is occurring up to much more rapidly in the Arctic than elsewhere.

Three years ago, I met with Sara in the Norwegian far north during a goavvi winter and joined Sámi herders on their snowmobiles in biting cold as they hauled carts of animal nutrition on to the wind-scoured frozen landscape to provide manually. The herd surrounded round us, pawing the frozen ground in vain for mossy bits. This expensive and demanding process is having a drastic influence on herding practices—and on the animals' independence. But the choice is starvation. As these icy periods become commonplace, reindeer are perishing—some from hunger, others suffocating after falling into water bodies through prematurely melting ice. In a sense, the art is a memorial to them. "With the layering of elements, in a way I'm bringing the goavvi to London," says Sara.

Opposing Perspectives

This artwork also highlights the clear contrast between the industrial interpretation of power as a resource to be harnessed for gain and existence and the Sámi worldview of vitality as an natural life force in creatures, people, and land. The gallery's past as a fossil fuel plant is connected to this, as is what the Sámi view as environmental exploitation by Nordic countries. In their efforts to be exemplars for sustainable power, Scandinavian countries have locked horns with the Sámi over the construction of wind energy projects, river barriers, and extraction sites on their ancestral land; the Sámi assert their legal protections, incomes, and traditions are at risk. "It's challenging being such a tiny group to defend yourself when the reasons are grounded in saving the world," Sara observes. "Extractivism has appropriated the rhetoric of ecology, but still it's just striving to find alternative ways to continue practices of consumption."

Individual Conflicts

She and her kin have personally disagreed with the Norwegian government over its tightening rules on animal husbandry. A few years ago, Sara's brother initiated a series of finally failed court actions over the mandatory slaughter of his herd, supposedly to stop vegetation depletion. As a show of solidarity, Sara created a four-year series of creations named Pile O'Sápmi comprising a colossal drape of four hundred cranial remains, which was exhibited at the 2017's event Documenta 14 and later acquired by the national institution, where it is displayed in the entryway.

The Role of Art in Advocacy

For many Sámi, art appears the only sphere in which they can be heard by outsiders. In 2022, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|