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Visitors to the renowned gallery are accustomed to unexpected encounters in its spacious Turbine Hall. They have basked under an simulated sun, glided down helter skelters, and witnessed AI-powered jellyfish hovering through the air. However this marks the inaugural time they will be venturing themselves in the complex nasal passages of a reindeer. The latest creative installation for this cavernous space—designed by Native Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—invites patrons into a labyrinthine construction inspired by the enlarged inside of a reindeer's nose passages. Once inside, they can stroll around or relax on skins, listening on earphones to tribal seniors telling stories and knowledge.

Focus on the Nasal Passages

What's the focus on the nose? It could sound whimsical, but the artwork celebrates a rarely recognized natural marvel: scientists have found that in less than one second, the reindeer's nose can heat the ambient air it breathes in by eighty degrees, enabling the creature to endure in extreme Arctic climates. Enlarging the nose to human-scale dimensions, Sara explains, "creates a feeling of inferiority that you as a human being are not dominant over nature." The artist is a former reporter, children's author, and rights advocate, who hails from a herding family in the far north of Norway. "Perhaps that creates the potential to shift your outlook or spark some modesty," she continues.

A Celebration to Indigenous Heritage

The maze-like design is part of a components in Sara's absorbing exhibition celebrating the culture, knowledge, and beliefs of the Sámi, the continent's original inhabitants. Semi-nomadic, the Sámi count roughly 100,000 people spread across the Norwegian north, Finland, Sweden, and Russia's Kola Peninsula (an territory they call Sápmi). They've faced discrimination, integration policies, and suppression of their language by all four countries. With an emphasis on the reindeer, an animal at the heart of the Sámi belief system and origin tale, the art also spotlights the people's challenges relating to the global warming, loss of territory, and colonialism.

Meaning in Components

At the lengthy entry slope, there's a soaring, 26-meter sculpture of pelts trapped by power and light cables. It represents a metaphor for the societal frameworks constraining the Sámi. Partly a utility pole, part celestial ladder, this section of the artwork, called Goavve-, points to the Sámi word for an harsh environmental condition, in which thick coatings of ice appear as changing temperatures thaw and solidify again the snow, locking in the reindeers' main cold-season sustenance, lichen. Goavvi is a consequence of planetary warming, which is occurring up to four times faster in the Polar region than in other regions.

Three years ago, I visited Sara in the Norwegian far north during a severe cold period and joined Sámi reindeer keepers on their Arctic vehicles in freezing temperatures as they hauled trailers of animal nutrition on to the exposed Arctic plains to dispense manually. The herd gathered round us, scratching the icy ground in vain attempts for mossy morsels. This costly and demanding process is having a drastic impact on herding practices—and on the animals' natural survival. But the other option is death. As these icy periods become commonplace, reindeer are perishing—a number from hunger, others suffocating after falling into streams through unstable frozen surfaces. In a sense, the work is a monument to them. "By overlapping of materials, in a way I'm bringing the goavvi to London," says Sara.

Diverging Perspectives

The installation also underscores the stark difference between the industrial understanding of energy as a resource to be exploited for gain and livelihood and the Sámi outlook of life force as an inherent power in creatures, humans, and nature. The gallery's legacy as a industrial facility is linked with this, as is what the Sámi consider environmental exploitation by regional governments. In their efforts to be standard bearers for renewable energy, Nordic nations have clashed with the Sámi over the building of windfarms, water power facilities, and mines on their native soil; the Sámi assert their legal protections, ways of life, and culture are endangered. "It's challenging being such a limited population to protect your rights when the justifications are grounded in global sustainability," Sara comments. "Extractivism has appropriated the rhetoric of ecology, but yet it's just aiming to find more suitable ways to continue patterns of consumption."

Personal Conflicts

She and her family have personally clashed with the Norwegian government over its tightening rules on animal husbandry. Previously, Sara's brother undertook a series of unsuccessful court actions over the forced culling of his animals, apparently to stop vegetation depletion. In support, Sara created a multi-year set of artworks called Pile O'Sápmi including a huge curtain of four hundred reindeer skulls, which was displayed at the 2017 art exhibition Documenta 14 and later purchased by the National Museum of Oslo, where it is displayed in the lobby.

Art as Advocacy

For many Sámi, art is the sole domain in which they can be understood by the global community. In 2022, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|