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Attendees to the renowned gallery are used to surprising displays in its spacious Turbine Hall. They have sunbathed under an simulated sun, descended down helter skelters, and seen automated jellyfish drifting through the air. However this marks the initial time they will be venturing themselves in the intricate nose passages of a reindeer. The latest artistic project for this cavernous space—created by Indigenous Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—encourages gallerygoers into a winding structure modeled after the enlarged interior of a reindeer's nose cavities. Once inside, they can meander around or chill out on skins, tuning in on headphones to tribal seniors sharing tales and knowledge.

Focus on the Nasal Passages

Why the nose? It could seem quirky, but the exhibit honors a little-known biological feat: scientists have found that in less than one second, the reindeer's nose can warm the ambient air it takes in by 80 degrees celsius, helping the animal to survive in inhospitable Arctic climates. Scaling the nose to human-scale dimensions, Sara says, "produces a feeling of insignificance that you as a individual are not superior over nature." The artist is a ex- writer, writer for kids, and environmental activist, who is from a reindeer-herding family in the far north of Norway. "Maybe that fosters the potential to change your viewpoint or trigger some humility," she adds.

An Homage to Indigenous Heritage

The winding installation is one of several features in Sara's absorbing exhibition celebrating the heritage, understanding, and beliefs of the Sámi, the sole native group in Europe. Traditionally mobile, the Sámi number approximately 100,000 people ranged across the Norwegian north, Finland, the Swedish Lapland, and Russia's Kola Peninsula (an region they call Sápmi). They have faced persecution, forced assimilation, and eradication of their language by all four nations. By focusing on the reindeer, an animal at the center of the Sámi cosmology and creation story, the work also spotlights the community's issues associated with the climate crisis, loss of territory, and external control.

Metaphor in Materials

Along the extended entry ramp, there's a soaring, eighty-five-foot formation of skins trapped by electrical wires. It represents a analogy for the political and economic systems constraining the Sámi. Like an electrical tower, part spiritual ascent, this section of the exhibit, called Goavve-, refers to the Sámi name for an harsh environmental condition, whereby thick coatings of ice form as varying weather thaw and solidify again the snow, trapping the reindeers' key winter nourishment, lichen. The condition is a result of global heating, which is taking place up to at an accelerated rate in the Polar region than elsewhere.

Previously, I traveled to see Sara in Guovdageaidnu during a goavvi winter and joined Sámi reindeer keepers on their motorized sleds in biting cold as they hauled containers of food pellets on to the exposed frozen landscape to dispense by hand. The reindeer gathered round us, digging the icy ground in futility for lichen-covered pieces. This resource-intensive and laborious process is having a severe effect on animal rearing—and on the animals' natural survival. Yet the choice is starvation. When such conditions become commonplace, reindeer are succumbing—a number from lack of food, others suffocating after falling into water bodies through unstable frozen surfaces. In a sense, the art is a monument to them. "With the layering of elements, in a way I'm introducing the phenomenon to London," says Sara.

Opposing Perspectives

This artwork also highlights the sharp divergence between the industrial view of electricity as a resource to be utilized for economic benefit and livelihood and the Sámi philosophy of life force as an natural essence in creatures, humans, and land. This venue's history as a industrial facility is linked with this, as is what the Sámi view as green colonialism by Scandinavian states. As they strive to be exemplars for sustainable power, Scandinavian countries have disagreed with the Sámi over the construction of turbine fields, river barriers, and digging operations on their native soil; the Sámi argue their fundamental freedoms, incomes, and way of life are at risk. "It's hard being such a small minority to defend yourself when the justifications are based on global sustainability," Sara comments. "Extractivism has appropriated the discourse of environmentalism, but still it's just aiming to find alternative ways to persist in practices of expenditure."

Personal Conflicts

Sara and her family have themselves disagreed with the Norwegian government over its increasingly stringent regulations on herding. A few years ago, Sara's brother undertook a series of finally failed lawsuits over the required reduction of his livestock, ostensibly to stop excessive feeding. To back him, Sara developed a four-year set of creations named Pile O'Sápmi featuring a colossal screen of 400 cranial remains, which was exhibited at the the art exhibition Documenta 14 and later acquired by the National Museum of Oslo, where it hangs in the entryway.

Art as Advocacy

For numerous Indigenous people, art seems the only realm in which they can be understood by outsiders. In 2022, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|