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Visitors to the renowned gallery are used to unexpected displays in its vast Turbine Hall. They have basked under an artificial sun, slid down spiral slides, and seen robotic sea creatures floating through the air. Yet this marks the first time they will be engaging themselves in the complex nose cavities of a reindeer. The latest creative installation for this cavernous space—designed by Native Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—invites gallerygoers into a labyrinthine structure based on the enlarged inside of a reindeer's nose passages. Once inside, they can wander around or chill out on reindeer hides, tuning in on earphones to Sámi elders telling stories and insights.

Why the Nose?

Why the nose? It might appear whimsical, but the exhibit pays tribute to a obscure scientific wonder: researchers have discovered that in under a second, the reindeer's nose can raise the temperature of the incoming air it inhales by eighty degrees, enabling the animal to survive in inhospitable Arctic climates. Enlarging the nose to bigger than a person, Sara says, "produces a sense of insignificance that you as a human being are not in control over nature." She is a former journalist, writer for kids, and rights advocate, who comes from a reindeer-herding family in northern Norway. "Possibly that fosters the chance to shift your viewpoint or spark some humility," she states.

An Homage to Sámi Culture

The labyrinthine structure is part of a elements in Sara's immersive exhibition honoring the traditions, science, and worldview of the Sámi, the continent's original inhabitants. Partially migratory, the Sámi count about 100,000 people spread across the Norwegian north, the Finnish Arctic, the Swedish Lapland, and the Russian Arctic (an territory they call Sápmi). They have endured persecution, integration policies, and repression of their language by all four countries. Through highlighting the reindeer, an animal at the center of the Sámi mythology and creation story, the installation also spotlights the community's issues connected to the climate crisis, property rights, and external control.

Symbolism in Elements

Along the long entry incline, there's a soaring, eighty-five-foot formation of reindeer hides ensnared by power and light cables. It represents a metaphor for the societal frameworks limiting the Sámi. Like an electrical tower, part celestial ladder, this component of the exhibit, titled Goavve-, refers to the Sámi word for an harsh environmental condition, whereby dense layers of ice appear as changing temperatures liquefy and ice over the snow, trapping the reindeers' primary cold-season sustenance, fungus. This phenomenon is a outcome of planetary warming, which is taking place up to four times faster in the Far North than in other regions.

A few years back, I met with Sara in a remote town during a severe cold period and went with Sámi herders on their snowmobiles in freezing temperatures as they transported carts of animal nutrition on to the barren frozen landscape to provide through labor. The herd crowded round us, digging the slippery ground in vain for lichen-covered morsels. This expensive and labour-intensive method is having a drastic impact on reindeer husbandry—and on the animals' natural survival. But the choice is starvation. As goavvi winters become routine, reindeer are perishing—a number from starvation, others suffocating after plunging into streams through thinning ice sheets. To some extent, the installation is a tribute to them. "By overlapping of materials, in a way I'm bringing the goavvi to London," says Sara.

Contrasting Perspectives

The installation also underscores the stark divergence between the western understanding of energy as a resource to be utilized for gain and existence and the Sámi outlook of life force as an inherent essence in animals, people, and nature. This venue's past as a industrial facility is tied up in this, as is what the Sámi view as green colonialism by Scandinavian states. In their efforts to be standard bearers for sustainable power, Scandinavian countries have locked horns with the Sámi over the development of windfarms, river barriers, and mines on their ancestral land; the Sámi assert their fundamental freedoms, ways of life, and culture are endangered. "It's hard being such a small minority to stand your ground when the arguments are grounded in environmental protection," Sara observes. "Extractivism has adopted the discourse of environmentalism, but nonetheless it's just striving to find alternative ways to maintain habits of use."

Individual Conflicts

She and her relatives have themselves conflicted with the Norwegian government over its increasingly stringent policies on animal husbandry. A few years ago, Sara's brother embarked on a set of finally failed lawsuits over the required reduction of his herd, apparently to stop excessive feeding. In support, Sara produced a four-year collection of pieces called Pile O'Sápmi featuring a huge drape of four hundred cranial remains, which was shown at the 2017's art exhibition Documenta 14 and later purchased by the National Museum of Oslo, where it is displayed in the entrance.

Art as Awareness

For many Sámi, art seems the exclusive domain in which they can be heard by people of other nations. Recently, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|