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Visitors to the renowned gallery are used to surprising displays in its spacious Turbine Hall. They've relaxed under an artificial sun, glided down amusement rides, and observed AI-powered jellyfish floating through the air. Yet this marks the first time they will be engaging themselves in the intricate nose cavities of a reindeer. The latest artistic project for this huge space—created by Indigenous Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—encourages gallerygoers into a labyrinthine design inspired by the enlarged interior of a reindeer's nose passages. Inside, they can meander around or chill out on pelts, tuning in on headphones to community leaders sharing tales and knowledge.

Focus on the Nasal Passages

Why the nose? It may seem whimsical, but the exhibit celebrates a rarely recognized biological feat: researchers have uncovered that in under a second, the reindeer's nose can raise the temperature of the surrounding air it breathes in by eighty degrees, allowing the animal to endure in inhospitable Arctic temperatures. Enlarging the nose to bigger than a person, Sara explains, "creates a feeling of smallness that you as a individual are not in control over nature." She is a ex- journalist, children's author, and rights advocate, who is from a herding family in the far north of Norway. "Possibly that creates the chance to shift your viewpoint or trigger some modesty," she states.

An Homage to Sámi Culture

The maze-like installation is part of a components in Sara's engaging commission showcasing the culture, knowledge, and beliefs of the Sámi, the sole native group in Europe. Traditionally mobile, the Sámi number about 100,000 people spread across the Norwegian north, Finland, the Swedish Lapland, and Russia's Kola Peninsula (an region they call Sápmi). They have experienced persecution, cultural suppression, and suppression of their language by all four states. With an emphasis on the reindeer, an creature at the core of the Sámi belief system and founding narrative, the installation also draws attention to the group's struggles relating to the climate crisis, loss of territory, and external control.

Symbolism in Materials

On the extended entrance slope, there's a soaring, 26-metre sculpture of reindeer hides entangled by power and light cables. It can be read as a analogy for the political and economic systems constraining the Sámi. Like an electrical tower, part celestial ladder, this part of the artwork, titled Goavve-, relates to the Sámi name for an severe climatic event, wherein solid sheets of ice form as changing temperatures liquefy and solidify again the snow, encasing the reindeers' main winter food, fungus. This phenomenon is a result of climate change, which is taking place up to much more rapidly in the Arctic than globally.

Three years ago, I traveled to see Sara in the Norwegian far north during a icy season and accompanied Sámi reindeer keepers on their Arctic vehicles in biting cold as they transported containers of supplementary feed on to the exposed tundra to dispense by hand. These animals crowded round us, scratching the icy ground in vain for mossy morsels. This resource-intensive and labour-intensive process is having a severe influence on herding practices—and on the animals' natural survival. Yet the choice is starvation. As these icy periods become routine, reindeer are succumbing—a number from starvation, others drowning after plunging into streams through thinning ice sheets. To some extent, the installation is a memorial to them. "By overlapping of materials, in a way I'm transporting the goavvi to London," says Sara.

Diverging Worldviews

This artwork also highlights the stark difference between the industrial view of energy as a resource to be exploited for gain and existence and the Sámi philosophy of energy as an natural power in creatures, people, and the environment. This venue's past as a coal and oil power station is tied up in this, as is what the Sámi view as green colonialism by Nordic countries. While attempting to be leaders for clean sources, Nordic nations have clashed with the Sámi over the construction of turbine fields, water power facilities, and digging operations on their ancestral land; the Sámi contend their fundamental freedoms, incomes, and culture are threatened. "It's very difficult being such a small minority to protect your rights when the justifications are grounded in saving the world," Sara comments. "Mining practices has co-opted the discourse of environmentalism, but yet it's just striving to find better ways to maintain habits of expenditure."

Individual Conflicts

She and her family have personally clashed with the Norwegian government over its increasingly stringent rules on reindeer management. A few years ago, Sara's brother initiated a series of finally failed court actions over the forced culling of his herd, ostensibly to stop vegetation depletion. To back him, Sara produced a four-year series of creations called Pile O'Sápmi featuring a colossal drape of 400 reindeer skulls, which was exhibited at the the event Documenta 14 and later acquired by the public gallery, where it hangs in the entrance.

Creative Expression as Advocacy

Among the community, art appears the only domain in which they can be listened to by the global community. Recently, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|