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Guests to the renowned gallery are accustomed to surprising displays in its vast Turbine Hall. They've relaxed under an simulated sun, descended down spiral slides, and witnessed robotic jellyfish floating through the air. But this marks the inaugural time they will be engaging themselves in the intricate nasal chambers of a reindeer. The current creative installation for this huge space—designed by Native Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—welcomes patrons into a labyrinthine construction based on the enlarged inside of a reindeer's nasal airways. Once inside, they can stroll around or chill out on pelts, tuning in on earphones to community leaders telling tales and knowledge.

The Significance of the Nose

Why choose the nasal structure? It could sound whimsical, but the artwork honors a obscure natural marvel: researchers have uncovered that in a fraction of a second, the reindeer's nose can warm the incoming air it inhales by 80 degrees celsius, allowing the creature to thrive in extreme Arctic conditions. Scaling the nose to bigger than a person, Sara notes, "produces a sense of inferiority that you as a person are not superior over nature." She is a former journalist, young adult author, and land defender, who comes from a reindeer-herding family in the far north of Norway. "Perhaps that fosters the chance to change your perspective or trigger some humbleness," she continues.

A Celebration to Sámi Culture

The labyrinthine design is part of a components in Sara's engaging commission celebrating the traditions, knowledge, and beliefs of the Sámi, Europe's only Indigenous people. Partially migratory, the Sámi count approximately 100,000 people spread across northern Norway, Finland, Sweden, and the Russian Arctic (an area they call Sápmi). They have experienced oppression, forced assimilation, and repression of their dialect by all four nations. Through highlighting the reindeer, an creature at the center of the Sámi mythology and creation story, the art also spotlights the group's struggles associated with the global warming, loss of territory, and colonialism.

Meaning in Materials

On the lengthy entry ramp, there's a towering, 26-meter structure of pelts entangled by utility lines. It serves as a analogy for the societal frameworks constraining the Sámi. Partly a utility pole, part heavenly staircase, this section of the artwork, titled Goavve-, refers to the Sámi name for an harsh environmental condition, whereby dense sheets of ice develop as fluctuating weather liquefy and ice over the snow, trapping the reindeers' main winter food, moss. The condition is a outcome of global heating, which is occurring up to at an accelerated rate in the Polar region than globally.

Previously, I traveled to see Sara in the Norwegian far north during a goavvi winter and went with Sámi reindeer keepers on their Arctic vehicles in biting cold as they transported containers of supplementary feed on to the exposed tundra to distribute manually. These animals gathered round us, digging the frozen ground in vain for vegetative pieces. This resource-intensive and labour-intensive process is having a severe effect on herding practices—and on the animals' self-sufficiency. But the alternative is malnutrition. As these icy periods become commonplace, reindeer are dying—a number from starvation, others suffocating after falling into streams through unstable frozen surfaces. On one level, the work is a monument to them. "By overlapping of components, in a way I'm bringing the condition to London," says Sara.

Opposing Perspectives

The sculpture also highlights the clear difference between the industrial view of electricity as a commodity to be exploited for gain and existence and the Sámi worldview of vitality as an natural life force in animals, people, and land. The gallery's past as a industrial facility is tied up in this, as is what the Sámi consider eco-imperialism by regional governments. In their efforts to be exemplars for renewable energy, Scandinavian countries have clashed with the Sámi over the building of wind energy projects, river barriers, and digging operations on their traditional territory; the Sámi assert their legal protections, incomes, and way of life are at risk. "It's challenging being such a tiny group to defend yourself when the justifications are grounded in global sustainability," Sara comments. "Extractivism has co-opted the rhetoric of ecology, but nonetheless it's just striving to find alternative ways to persist in patterns of use."

Family Challenges

Sara and her relatives have themselves clashed with the Norwegian government over its ever-stricter regulations on herding. A few years ago, Sara's brother undertook a set of unsuccessful lawsuits over the forced culling of his livestock, apparently to stop overgrazing. To back him, Sara created a multi-year set of pieces titled Pile O'Sápmi comprising a massive drape of 400 animal bones, which was exhibited at the 2017 art exhibition Documenta 14 and later purchased by the national institution, where it resides in the lobby.

Art as Advocacy

For many Sámi, creative work seems the only sphere in which they can be understood by outsiders. Two years ago, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|