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Visitors to the renowned gallery are familiar to surprising encounters in its spacious Turbine Hall. They've sunbathed under an simulated sun, slid down spiral slides, and witnessed robotic sea creatures floating through the air. However this marks the initial time they will be venturing themselves in the complex nasal passages of a reindeer. The newest artist commission for this immense space—designed by Indigenous Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—welcomes visitors into a maze-like structure modeled after the scaled-up interior of a reindeer's nose passages. Inside, they can wander around or relax on pelts, listening on headphones to Sámi elders telling tales and insights.

Focus on the Nasal Passages

What's the focus on the nose? It may sound quirky, but the installation celebrates a obscure biological feat: experts have found that in a fraction of a second, the reindeer's nose can heat the surrounding air it takes in by 80 degrees celsius, enabling the animal to endure in extreme Arctic temperatures. Scaling the nose to larger than human size, Sara explains, "generates a perception of insignificance that you as a individual are not dominant over nature." She is a former writer, young adult author, and rights advocate, who is from a pastoral family in northern Norway. "Maybe that generates the chance to shift your viewpoint or evoke some humbleness," she adds.

A Celebration to Indigenous Heritage

The winding installation is among various elements in Sara's engaging commission celebrating the heritage, science, and beliefs of the Sámi, the continent's original inhabitants. Partially migratory, the Sámi number about 100,000 people distributed across northern Norway, Finland, the Swedish Lapland, and the Russian Arctic (an territory they call Sápmi). They've faced oppression, integration policies, and repression of their language by all four states. Through highlighting the reindeer, an creature at the center of the Sámi cosmology and creation story, the work also draws attention to the group's issues connected to the environmental emergency, loss of territory, and imperialism.

Meaning in Elements

At the extended entrance ramp, there's a towering, 26-meter structure of reindeer hides ensnared by utility lines. It represents a symbol for the political and economic systems constraining the Sámi. Partly a utility pole, part spiritual ascent, this part of the exhibit, called Goavve-, relates to the Sámi name for an severe climatic event, wherein dense sheets of ice form as fluctuating conditions melt and ice over the snow, trapping the reindeers' primary cold-season food, moss. Goavvi is a consequence of climate change, which is taking place up to much more rapidly in the Far North than in other regions.

Three years ago, I met with Sara in a remote town during a goavvi winter and went with Sámi herders on their motorized sleds in freezing temperatures as they transported carts of animal nutrition on to the barren tundra to dispense manually. The reindeer gathered round us, pawing the frozen ground in vain attempts for mossy bits. This resource-intensive and demanding method is having a drastic influence on herding practices—and on the animals' independence. However the other option is starvation. As these icy periods become commonplace, reindeer are perishing—a number from starvation, others drowning after falling into streams through thinning ice sheets. To some extent, the art is a monument to them. "Through the stacking of materials, in a way I'm transporting the goavvi to London," says Sara.

Opposing Perspectives

This artwork also emphasizes the stark divergence between the industrial view of power as a resource to be utilized for gain and existence and the Sámi worldview of life force as an natural power in animals, people, and the environment. This venue's legacy as a industrial facility is linked with this, as is what the Sámi see as environmental exploitation by regional governments. As they strive to be exemplars for renewable energy, these states have clashed with the Sámi over the building of wind energy projects, river barriers, and mines on their ancestral land; the Sámi argue their fundamental freedoms, incomes, and way of life are endangered. "It's very difficult being such a small minority to protect your rights when the justifications are rooted in saving the world," Sara observes. "Extractivism has adopted the language of sustainability, but yet it's just attempting to find alternative ways to continue practices of expenditure."

Personal Challenges

The artist and her kin have themselves disagreed with the national administration over its increasingly stringent rules on animal husbandry. Previously, Sara's brother undertook a set of ultimately unsuccessful legal cases over the forced culling of his herd, supposedly to stop vegetation depletion. To back him, Sara developed a multi-year collection of creations named Pile O'Sápmi comprising a huge drape of 400 cranial remains, which was exhibited at the the art exhibition Documenta 14 and later purchased by the national institution, where it resides in the entryway.

Creative Expression as Awareness

For numerous Indigenous people, art appears the exclusive sphere in which they can be heard by the global community. Two years ago, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|