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Visitors to the renowned gallery are familiar to unusual encounters in its expansive Turbine Hall. They have basked under an man-made sun, descended down amusement rides, and witnessed AI-powered sea creatures floating through the air. However this marks the initial time they will be venturing themselves in the complex nasal cavities of a reindeer. The current artistic project for this cavernous space—created by Native Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—encourages patrons into a winding design modeled after the enlarged inside of a reindeer's nasal passages. Once inside, they can meander around or relax on reindeer hides, listening on earphones to Sámi elders telling stories and knowledge.

Why the Nose?

Why choose the nasal structure? It could appear whimsical, but the installation pays tribute to a obscure biological feat: researchers have found that in less than one second, the reindeer's nose can heat the surrounding air it breathes in by eighty degrees, enabling the creature to thrive in harsh Arctic conditions. Enlarging the nose to larger than human size, Sara notes, "creates a sense of insignificance that you as a individual are not dominant over nature." Sara is a ex- reporter, young adult author, and land defender, who hails from a reindeer-herding family in northern Norway. "Maybe that generates the chance to shift your viewpoint or spark some humility," she adds.

A Tribute to Indigenous Heritage

The winding design is part of a components in Sara's absorbing art project celebrating the traditions, knowledge, and philosophy of the Sámi, the continent's original inhabitants. Semi-nomadic, the Sámi total approximately 100,000 people ranged across the Norwegian north, Finland, the Swedish Lapland, and the Kola region (an area they call Sápmi). They have experienced persecution, integration policies, and eradication of their dialect by all four nations. With an emphasis on the reindeer, an animal at the center of the Sámi belief system and founding narrative, the art also spotlights the people's challenges connected to the environmental emergency, land dispossession, and external control.

Symbolism in Elements

At the lengthy entrance ramp, there's a soaring, 26-meter formation of reindeer hides trapped by utility lines. It represents a analogy for the societal frameworks constraining the Sámi. Part pylon, part heavenly staircase, this part of the installation, called Goavve-, refers to the Sámi term for an harsh environmental condition, wherein solid layers of ice develop as fluctuating conditions thaw and ice over the snow, trapping the reindeers' primary winter sustenance, moss. Goavvi is a result of planetary warming, which is occurring up to much more rapidly in the Far North than in other regions.

A few years back, I visited Sara in Guovdageaidnu during a severe cold period and went with Sámi reindeer keepers on their Arctic vehicles in chilly conditions as they hauled containers of animal nutrition on to the exposed Arctic plains to distribute by hand. The reindeer surrounded round us, pawing the icy ground in futility for mossy bits. This resource-intensive and demanding procedure is having a drastic influence on animal rearing—and on the animals' independence. But the choice is starvation. When such conditions become routine, reindeer are dying—some from starvation, others suffocating after sinking in streams through unstable frozen surfaces. In a sense, the work is a tribute to them. "By overlapping of elements, in a way I'm introducing the condition to London," says Sara.

Diverging Worldviews

The installation also emphasizes the clear divergence between the industrial interpretation of power as a commodity to be exploited for profit and existence and the Sámi worldview of vitality as an inherent power in animals, people, and the environment. This venue's history as a coal and oil power station is tied up in this, as is what the Sámi consider eco-imperialism by Nordic countries. As they strive to be exemplars for renewable energy, Nordic nations have clashed with the Sámi over the building of turbine fields, river barriers, and digging operations on their ancestral land; the Sámi assert their human rights, incomes, and culture are at risk. "It's very difficult being such a tiny group to stand your ground when the arguments are based on global sustainability," Sara notes. "Mining practices has appropriated the discourse of environmentalism, but nonetheless it's just striving to find more suitable ways to continue practices of expenditure."

Personal Challenges

The artist and her family have personally conflicted with the national administration over its increasingly stringent policies on reindeer management. In 2016, Sara's sibling initiated a series of finally failed legal cases over the required reduction of his animals, supposedly to stop overgrazing. In support, Sara produced a four-year series of creations called Pile O'Sápmi including a massive curtain of numerous animal bones, which was displayed at the 2017's event Documenta 14 and later purchased by the public gallery, where it is displayed in the entrance.

Art as Activism

For many Sámi, visual expression is the only sphere in which they can be listened to by the global community. In 2022, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|