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Visitors to the renowned gallery are familiar to unusual experiences in its expansive Turbine Hall. They've basked under an simulated sun, descended down spiral slides, and observed robotic jellyfish drifting through the air. But this marks the initial time they will be immersing themselves in the intricate nose cavities of a reindeer. The latest creative installation for this huge space—developed by Native Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—welcomes patrons into a maze-like structure based on the scaled-up inside of a reindeer's nasal passages. Inside, they can meander around or chill out on skins, tuning in on earphones to tribal seniors imparting narratives and wisdom.

Focus on the Nasal Passages

Why the nose? It might appear whimsical, but the exhibit honors a little-known biological feat: experts have discovered that in a fraction of a second, the reindeer's nose can raise the temperature of the ambient air it breathes in by eighty degrees, enabling the creature to survive in harsh Arctic conditions. Expanding the nose to larger than human size, Sara says, "produces a feeling of smallness that you as a person are not dominant over nature." Sara is a ex- journalist, children's author, and rights advocate, who is from a pastoral family in the far north of Norway. "Perhaps that generates the chance to alter your outlook or evoke some humbleness," she states.

A Tribute to Traditional Ways

The labyrinthine design is one of several features in Sara's engaging commission showcasing the traditions, understanding, and worldview of the Sámi, the sole native group in Europe. Partially migratory, the Sámi number about 100,000 people distributed across the Norwegian north, the Finnish Arctic, Sweden, and the Russian Arctic (an region they call Sápmi). They've experienced persecution, cultural suppression, and eradication of their tongue by all four countries. Through highlighting the reindeer, an animal at the core of the Sámi cosmology and creation story, the work also draws attention to the group's issues connected to the global warming, loss of territory, and imperialism.

Metaphor in Materials

At the lengthy entrance slope, there's a looming, 26-metre formation of skins entangled by utility lines. It serves as a metaphor for the societal frameworks constraining the Sámi. Like an electrical tower, part heavenly staircase, this section of the exhibit, titled Goavve-, points to the Sámi name for an severe climatic event, in which thick layers of ice appear as fluctuating weather melt and ice over the snow, locking in the reindeers' primary cold-season food, moss. Goavvi is a outcome of planetary warming, which is occurring up to much more rapidly in the Polar region than in other regions.

A few years back, I visited Sara in Guovdageaidnu during a icy season and accompanied Sámi herders on their Arctic vehicles in chilly conditions as they transported trailers of animal nutrition on to the barren frozen landscape to provide through labor. The herd crowded round us, digging the icy ground in vain for vegetative morsels. This resource-intensive and laborious method is having a drastic effect on herding practices—and on the animals' self-sufficiency. Yet the alternative is malnutrition. As goavvi winters become commonplace, reindeer are perishing—a number from starvation, others submerging after falling into lakes and rivers through thinning ice sheets. To some extent, the art is a memorial to them. "Through the stacking of elements, in a way I'm bringing the condition to London," says Sara.

Opposing Belief Systems

The installation also emphasizes the sharp divergence between the modern view of power as a resource to be harnessed for economic benefit and livelihood and the Sámi outlook of vitality as an innate essence in animals, individuals, and the environment. The gallery's legacy as a coal and oil power station is tied up in this, as is what the Sámi view as green colonialism by Nordic countries. As they strive to be standard bearers for sustainable power, these states have clashed with the Sámi over the building of turbine fields, river barriers, and digging operations on their ancestral land; the Sámi argue their human rights, livelihoods, and culture are endangered. "It's very difficult being such a limited population to defend yourself when the arguments are rooted in global sustainability," Sara notes. "Mining practices has co-opted the language of environmentalism, but yet it's just striving to find alternative ways to maintain habits of consumption."

Personal Challenges

Sara and her family have personally clashed with the national administration over its increasingly stringent regulations on reindeer management. A few years ago, Sara's brother initiated a series of unsuccessful lawsuits over the forced culling of his animals, apparently to stop overgrazing. As a show of solidarity, Sara created a extended collection of artworks called Pile O'Sápmi including a massive drape of 400 animal bones, which was shown at the 2017's event Documenta 14 and later purchased by the National Museum of Oslo, where it hangs in the lobby.

Creative Expression as Awareness

Among the community, creative work appears the sole sphere in which they can be heard by the global community. In 2022, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|