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Visitors to the renowned gallery are accustomed to unexpected experiences in its spacious Turbine Hall. They've sunbathed under an artificial sun, slid down amusement rides, and seen automated sea creatures floating through the air. But this marks the inaugural time they will be engaging themselves in the detailed nose passages of a reindeer. The current artist commission for this cavernous space—created by Indigenous Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—welcomes visitors into a labyrinthine design inspired by the expanded inside of a reindeer's nasal passages. Once inside, they can meander around or unwind on pelts, listening on headphones to tribal seniors sharing narratives and insights.

The Significance of the Nose

Why choose the nasal structure? It may seem playful, but the installation honors a rarely recognized biological feat: experts have discovered that in a fraction of a second, the reindeer's nose can raise the temperature of the ambient air it breathes in by 80°C, helping the animal to survive in extreme Arctic climates. Scaling the nose to human-scale dimensions, Sara says, "generates a perception of smallness that you as a person are not in control over nature." She is a ex- journalist, children's author, and environmental activist, who hails from a herding family in the far north of Norway. "Maybe that creates the potential to change your viewpoint or trigger some humility," she continues.

A Tribute to Indigenous Heritage

The labyrinthine design is part of a components in Sara's absorbing art project showcasing the heritage, understanding, and worldview of the Sámi, the sole native group in Europe. Semi-nomadic, the Sámi count roughly 100,000 people spread across the Norwegian north, the Finnish Arctic, Sweden, and Russia's Kola Peninsula (an area they call Sápmi). They have faced discrimination, forced assimilation, and suppression of their tongue by all four states. Through highlighting the reindeer, an creature at the heart of the Sámi cosmology and creation story, the art also highlights the community's challenges connected to the global warming, loss of territory, and colonialism.

Metaphor in Components

On the lengthy entry ramp, there's a soaring, 26-meter formation of skins entangled by electrical wires. It serves as a analogy for the governance and financial structures limiting the Sámi. Like an electrical tower, part celestial ladder, this part of the exhibit, named Goavve-, relates to the Sámi term for an extreme weather phenomenon, wherein thick coatings of ice develop as fluctuating weather melt and refreeze the snow, locking in the reindeers' key winter food, fungus. The condition is a outcome of climate change, which is happening up to four times faster in the Arctic than elsewhere.

Previously, I traveled to see Sara in the Norwegian far north during a severe cold period and joined Sámi herders on their snowmobiles in chilly conditions as they transported trailers of supplementary feed on to the wind-scoured tundra to dispense by hand. The herd surrounded round us, scratching the icy ground in vain attempts for mossy pieces. This expensive and demanding procedure is having a drastic impact on herding practices—and on the animals' self-sufficiency. But the other option is malnutrition. As goavvi winters become frequent, reindeer are dying—some from hunger, others submerging after sinking in streams through thinning ice sheets. In a sense, the installation is a monument to them. "By overlapping of elements, in a way I'm introducing the phenomenon to London," says Sara.

Opposing Perspectives

The installation also highlights the stark contrast between the industrial view of power as a asset to be exploited for gain and livelihood and the Sámi philosophy of life force as an innate life force in animals, humans, and land. The gallery's legacy as a fossil fuel plant is tied up in this, as is what the Sámi see as environmental exploitation by regional governments. As they strive to be standard bearers for renewable energy, Nordic nations have clashed with the Sámi over the construction of windfarms, river barriers, and digging operations on their ancestral land; the Sámi assert their fundamental freedoms, livelihoods, and culture are threatened. "It's very difficult being such a tiny group to stand your ground when the reasons are grounded in global sustainability," Sara comments. "Extractivism has appropriated the discourse of environmentalism, but nonetheless it's just striving to find alternative ways to maintain practices of consumption."

Personal Conflicts

The artist and her kin have personally clashed with the Norwegian government over its increasingly stringent rules on herding. A few years ago, Sara's sibling initiated a series of ultimately unsuccessful legal cases over the mandatory slaughter of his animals, supposedly to stop overgrazing. As a show of solidarity, Sara developed a multi-year set of artworks called Pile O'Sápmi comprising a massive screen of 400 reindeer skulls, which was shown at the 2017's art exhibition Documenta 14 and later purchased by the national institution, where it is displayed in the entrance.

Art as Awareness

For many Sámi, visual expression appears the sole sphere in which they can be understood by people of other nations. Two years ago, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|