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Guests to the renowned gallery are accustomed to unusual encounters in its vast Turbine Hall. They have sunbathed under an simulated sun, slid down amusement rides, and witnessed AI-powered jellyfish drifting through the air. But this marks the initial time they will be venturing themselves in the intricate nose passages of a reindeer. The current creative installation for this immense space—created by Indigenous Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—welcomes gallerygoers into a winding structure modeled after the expanded interior of a reindeer's nasal cavities. Upon entering, they can meander around or relax on skins, listening on earphones to tribal seniors imparting narratives and knowledge.

Why the Nose?

What's the focus on the nose? It might seem quirky, but the exhibit celebrates a rarely recognized scientific wonder: experts have discovered that in under a second, the reindeer's nose can warm the incoming air it breathes in by 80°C, enabling the animal to thrive in extreme Arctic temperatures. Scaling the nose to bigger than a person, Sara notes, "creates a feeling of inferiority that you as a person are not superior over nature." The artist is a former writer, writer for kids, and land defender, who comes from a herding family in northern Norway. "Perhaps that creates the chance to shift your viewpoint or spark some humbleness," she continues.

A Tribute to Traditional Ways

The maze-like installation is part of a components in Sara's engaging exhibition celebrating the culture, understanding, and beliefs of the Sámi, the continent's original inhabitants. Traditionally mobile, the Sámi number roughly 100,000 people ranged across the Norwegian north, the Finnish Arctic, the Swedish Lapland, and Russia's Kola Peninsula (an territory they call Sápmi). They have endured oppression, forced assimilation, and eradication of their language by all four nations. With an emphasis on the reindeer, an animal at the core of the Sámi belief system and origin tale, the installation also highlights the community's issues relating to the environmental emergency, loss of territory, and external control.

Symbolism in Elements

At the extended entrance incline, there's a towering, 26-metre structure of reindeer hides ensnared by utility lines. It represents a metaphor for the societal frameworks restricting the Sámi. Partly a utility pole, part spiritual ascent, this component of the exhibit, named Goavve-, relates to the Sámi term for an harsh environmental condition, whereby thick layers of ice develop as fluctuating temperatures liquefy and refreeze the snow, locking in the reindeers' primary winter nourishment, lichen. The condition is a result of climate change, which is occurring up to at an accelerated rate in the Arctic than in other regions.

Previously, I visited Sara in a remote town during a goavvi winter and accompanied Sámi reindeer keepers on their motorized sleds in freezing temperatures as they hauled containers of food pellets on to the exposed tundra to distribute through labor. The reindeer crowded round us, pawing the slippery ground in futility for mossy pieces. This costly and labour-intensive process is having a drastic influence on animal rearing—and on the animals' self-sufficiency. Yet the alternative is malnutrition. When such conditions become commonplace, reindeer are succumbing—some from starvation, others drowning after plunging into water bodies through prematurely melting ice. To some extent, the installation is a monument to them. "Through the stacking of components, in a way I'm bringing the goavvi to London," says Sara.

Diverging Worldviews

The sculpture also highlights the clear difference between the modern understanding of power as a asset to be utilized for economic benefit and survival and the Sámi outlook of energy as an natural life force in creatures, humans, and the environment. The gallery's past as a fossil fuel plant is connected to this, as is what the Sámi see as environmental exploitation by regional governments. In their efforts to be exemplars for sustainable power, these states have locked horns with the Sámi over the construction of turbine fields, river barriers, and extraction sites on their native soil; the Sámi contend their legal protections, incomes, and traditions are at risk. "It's challenging being such a tiny group to stand your ground when the justifications are rooted in global sustainability," Sara notes. "Mining practices has adopted the discourse of environmentalism, but nonetheless it's just attempting to find alternative ways to continue patterns of use."

Personal Conflicts

The artist and her kin have personally conflicted with the national administration over its increasingly stringent regulations on reindeer management. Previously, Sara's sibling initiated a set of finally failed lawsuits over the mandatory slaughter of his animals, ostensibly to stop overgrazing. To back him, Sara produced a multi-year collection of creations called Pile O'Sápmi including a huge drape of numerous animal bones, which was shown at the the show Documenta 14 and later purchased by the national institution, where it is displayed in the entrance.

The Role of Art in Awareness

For numerous Indigenous people, creative work seems the exclusive realm in which they can be understood by people of other nations. Two years ago, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|