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Guests to the renowned gallery are used to unusual encounters in its spacious Turbine Hall. They have basked under an simulated sun, descended down helter skelters, and seen AI-powered sea creatures floating through the air. However this marks the inaugural time they will be engaging themselves in the detailed nasal chambers of a reindeer. The newest artist commission for this cavernous space—designed by Indigenous Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—encourages gallerygoers into a maze-like structure based on the enlarged interior of a reindeer's nasal passages. Inside, they can stroll around or unwind on pelts, tuning in on headphones to community leaders imparting stories and wisdom.

Focus on the Nasal Passages

Why the nose? It might seem whimsical, but the installation pays tribute to a obscure natural marvel: experts have discovered that in a fraction of a second, the reindeer's nose can warm the surrounding air it inhales by 80 degrees celsius, allowing the animal to survive in harsh Arctic climates. Enlarging the nose to larger than human size, Sara notes, "creates a feeling of insignificance that you as a human being are not dominant over nature." The artist is a ex- writer, young adult author, and environmental activist, who comes from a herding family in the far north of Norway. "Possibly that generates the potential to change your viewpoint or evoke some modesty," she continues.

A Tribute to Sámi Culture

The maze-like structure is one of several components in Sara's immersive commission showcasing the traditions, knowledge, and beliefs of the Sámi, the continent's original inhabitants. Traditionally mobile, the Sámi count approximately 100,000 people ranged across northern Norway, the Finnish Arctic, the Swedish Lapland, and the Kola region (an territory they call Sápmi). They've experienced discrimination, integration policies, and repression of their language by all four states. By focusing on the reindeer, an animal at the core of the Sámi cosmology and origin tale, the installation also spotlights the people's issues relating to the climate crisis, loss of territory, and colonialism.

Meaning in Elements

At the long access ramp, there's a soaring, 26-meter structure of pelts ensnared by utility lines. It represents a metaphor for the societal frameworks limiting the Sámi. Like an electrical tower, part heavenly staircase, this component of the installation, titled Goavve-, points to the Sámi word for an severe climatic event, whereby thick sheets of ice develop as changing temperatures thaw and solidify again the snow, trapping the reindeers' primary winter food, lichen. This phenomenon is a outcome of climate change, which is happening up to much more rapidly in the Arctic than elsewhere.

Three years ago, I visited Sara in Guovdageaidnu during a severe cold period and accompanied Sámi herders on their motorized sleds in freezing temperatures as they carried containers of animal nutrition on to the exposed tundra to distribute through labor. These animals crowded round us, pawing the slippery ground in futility for vegetative morsels. This expensive and demanding process is having a drastic impact on animal rearing—and on the animals' independence. But the alternative is malnutrition. As goavvi winters become commonplace, reindeer are perishing—a number from lack of food, 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 transporting the phenomenon to London," says Sara.

Contrasting Belief Systems

This artwork also emphasizes the sharp difference between the industrial understanding of energy as a commodity to be harnessed for economic benefit and livelihood and the Sámi philosophy of life force as an innate essence in animals, humans, and land. The gallery's history as a industrial facility is linked with this, as is what the Sámi consider eco-imperialism by Nordic countries. As they strive to be standard bearers for sustainable power, these states have clashed with the Sámi over the building of wind energy projects, river barriers, and extraction sites on their ancestral land; the Sámi assert their human rights, livelihoods, and traditions are threatened. "It's hard being such a limited population to protect your rights when the arguments are rooted in saving the world," Sara notes. "Resource exploitation has appropriated the rhetoric of environmentalism, but still it's just attempting to find alternative ways to maintain patterns of use."

Individual Conflicts

She and her relatives have personally conflicted with the state authorities over its increasingly stringent regulations on animal husbandry. A few years ago, Sara's sibling embarked on a set of ultimately unsuccessful court actions over the required reduction of his herd, apparently to stop excessive feeding. In support, Sara produced a extended collection of creations called Pile O'Sápmi including a massive screen of numerous reindeer skulls, which was shown at the 2017's show Documenta 14 and later acquired by the National Museum of Oslo, where it hangs in the entryway.

Creative Expression as Awareness

Among the community, creative work appears the only realm in which they can be understood by people of other nations. Recently, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|