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Guests to the renowned gallery are familiar to unexpected experiences in its vast Turbine Hall. They've basked under an artificial sun, slid down helter skelters, and observed AI-powered jellyfish drifting through the air. But this marks the inaugural time they will be engaging themselves in the detailed nasal passages of a reindeer. The newest artistic project for this cavernous space—developed by Indigenous Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—encourages visitors into a labyrinthine structure based on the enlarged interior of a reindeer's nose passages. Once inside, they can stroll around or unwind on pelts, tuning in on earphones to community leaders telling narratives and knowledge.

Focus on the Nasal Passages

What's the focus on the nose? It might appear whimsical, but the artwork celebrates a obscure biological feat: scientists have found that in less than one second, the reindeer's nose can heat the ambient air it inhales by eighty degrees, helping the creature to endure in harsh Arctic temperatures. Scaling the nose to larger than human size, Sara notes, "produces a perception of smallness that you as a human being are not dominant over nature." She is a former reporter, young adult author, and rights advocate, who comes from a pastoral family in the Norwegian Arctic. "Possibly that fosters the potential to alter your perspective or spark some humbleness," she continues.

An Homage to Indigenous Heritage

The winding design is part of a features in Sara's engaging art project showcasing the culture, science, and beliefs of the Sámi, Europe's only Indigenous people. Partially migratory, the Sámi count approximately 100,000 people distributed across northern Norway, Finland, Sweden, and Russia's Kola Peninsula (an region they call Sápmi). They have faced persecution, forced assimilation, and eradication of their dialect by all four nations. By focusing on the reindeer, an animal at the center of the Sámi cosmology and origin tale, the art also draws attention to the group's challenges connected to the climate crisis, loss of territory, and colonialism.

Metaphor in Components

At the extended entry slope, there's a soaring, 26-metre sculpture of pelts entangled by utility lines. It serves as a symbol for the political and economic systems constraining the Sámi. Partly a utility pole, part heavenly staircase, this part of the exhibit, named Goavve-, refers to the Sámi word for an severe climatic event, in which dense sheets of ice form as changing temperatures melt and solidify again the snow, locking in the reindeers' key cold-season sustenance, lichen. Goavvi is a result of planetary warming, which is occurring up to much more rapidly in the Arctic than globally.

Previously, I traveled to see Sara in Guovdageaidnu during a goavvi winter and accompanied Sámi reindeer keepers on their Arctic vehicles in freezing temperatures as they carried trailers of food pellets on to the barren tundra to provide by hand. These animals gathered round us, scratching the slippery ground in vain for vegetative bits. This expensive and laborious method is having a severe impact on herding practices—and on the animals' self-sufficiency. But the other option is malnutrition. As these icy periods become frequent, reindeer are dying—a number from starvation, others suffocating after plunging into water bodies through prematurely melting ice. On one level, the art is a tribute to them. "By overlapping of elements, in a way I'm introducing the phenomenon to London," says Sara.

Opposing Perspectives

The installation also underscores the stark difference between the industrial interpretation of energy as a commodity to be utilized for economic benefit and livelihood and the Sámi outlook of energy as an innate essence in creatures, humans, and nature. The gallery's history as a coal and oil power station is linked with this, as is what the Sámi view as eco-imperialism by Scandinavian states. In their efforts to be standard bearers for sustainable power, Scandinavian countries have clashed with the Sámi over the construction of turbine fields, water power facilities, and digging operations on their traditional territory; the Sámi argue their fundamental freedoms, ways of life, and culture are threatened. "It's hard being such a tiny group to protect your rights when the justifications are rooted in saving the world," Sara notes. "Mining practices has appropriated the language of ecology, but still it's just attempting to find better ways to maintain habits of consumption."

Family Challenges

She and her kin have themselves disagreed with the national administration over its ever-stricter rules on animal husbandry. A few years ago, Sara's sibling undertook a series of ultimately unsuccessful court actions over the mandatory slaughter of his herd, ostensibly to stop excessive feeding. In support, Sara created a four-year series of creations named Pile O'Sápmi featuring a huge screen of 400 cranial remains, which was displayed at the the show Documenta 14 and later obtained by the national institution, where it is displayed in the entrance.

Art as Activism

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