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Attendees to the renowned gallery are familiar to unusual experiences in its vast Turbine Hall. They've relaxed under an simulated sun, descended down amusement rides, and observed robotic sea creatures hovering through the air. However this marks the first time they will be immersing themselves in the complex nose passages of a reindeer. The latest creative installation for this immense space—created by Native Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—welcomes visitors into a labyrinthine construction based on the expanded interior of a reindeer's nose cavities. Inside, they can wander around or chill out on reindeer hides, tuning in on earphones to Sámi elders sharing tales and insights.

The Significance of the Nose

Why choose the nasal structure? It may seem whimsical, but the exhibit honors a obscure scientific wonder: researchers have discovered that in less than one second, the reindeer's nose can warm the incoming air it takes in by 80 degrees celsius, allowing the animal to thrive in extreme Arctic conditions. Enlarging the nose to bigger than a person, Sara notes, "produces a perception of insignificance that you as a individual are not dominant over nature." Sara is a former writer, children's author, and environmental activist, who hails from a herding family in the far north of Norway. "Perhaps that creates the chance to alter your outlook or trigger some humbleness," she states.

A Tribute to Traditional Ways

The winding installation is among various features in Sara's immersive commission showcasing the heritage, understanding, and worldview of the Sámi, the continent's original inhabitants. Partially migratory, the Sámi total about 100,000 people ranged across the Norwegian north, Finland, Sweden, and the Kola region (an area they call Sápmi). They have endured discrimination, integration policies, and repression of their tongue by all four nations. With an emphasis on the reindeer, an creature at the heart of the Sámi cosmology and origin tale, the art also highlights the people's issues connected to the environmental emergency, loss of territory, and imperialism.

Metaphor in Elements

At the long access incline, there's a towering, 26-meter structure of pelts trapped by power and light cables. It serves as a symbol for the governance and financial structures constraining the Sámi. Like an electrical tower, part heavenly staircase, this component of the installation, named Goavve-, relates to the Sámi name for an extreme weather phenomenon, whereby thick sheets of ice appear as changing conditions thaw and refreeze the snow, encasing the reindeers' key winter nourishment, moss. Goavvi is a result of climate change, which is occurring up to much more rapidly in the Arctic than elsewhere.

Previously, I met with Sara in a remote town during a icy season and went with Sámi reindeer keepers on their Arctic vehicles in biting cold as they hauled containers of animal nutrition on to the exposed Arctic plains to provide manually. The herd crowded round us, scratching the slippery ground in futility for vegetative morsels. This expensive and labour-intensive process is having a significant influence on reindeer husbandry—and on the animals' natural survival. But the choice is starvation. As these icy periods become frequent, reindeer are perishing—some from hunger, others drowning after plunging into lakes and rivers through prematurely melting ice. On one level, the art is a monument to them. "Through the stacking of components, in a way I'm bringing the condition to London," says Sara.

Contrasting Perspectives

The sculpture also underscores the stark contrast between the industrial view of electricity as a commodity to be utilized for profit and survival and the Sámi worldview of energy as an innate power in animals, people, and land. The gallery's past as a fossil fuel plant is linked with this, as is what the Sámi view as green colonialism by regional governments. As they strive to be standard bearers for renewable energy, Nordic nations have disagreed with the Sámi over the development of windfarms, water power facilities, and extraction sites on their native soil; the Sámi contend their legal protections, ways of life, and way of life are at risk. "It's very difficult being such a limited population to protect your rights when the justifications are based on saving the world," Sara observes. "Resource exploitation has appropriated the rhetoric of ecology, but nonetheless it's just attempting to find alternative ways to maintain habits of expenditure."

Family Conflicts

The artist and her kin have themselves clashed with the state authorities over its ever-stricter policies on herding. Previously, Sara's sibling initiated a sequence of ultimately unsuccessful court actions over the mandatory slaughter of his livestock, supposedly to stop vegetation depletion. As a show of solidarity, Sara created a multi-year set of creations titled Pile O'Sápmi including a colossal screen of numerous cranial remains, which was exhibited at the 2017's show Documenta 14 and later acquired by the public gallery, where it hangs in the lobby.

Art as Awareness

For many Sámi, visual expression seems the only domain in which they can be heard by people of other nations. Two years ago, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|