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Attendees to the renowned gallery are accustomed to unexpected displays in its expansive Turbine Hall. They have relaxed under an artificial sun, slid down helter skelters, and witnessed automated jellyfish floating through the air. But this marks the inaugural time they will be venturing themselves in the detailed nasal chambers of a reindeer. The latest artist commission for this huge space—developed by Indigenous Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—invites visitors into a labyrinthine design based on the enlarged interior of a reindeer's nose cavities. Inside, they can wander around or unwind on skins, tuning in on earphones to Sámi elders sharing tales and wisdom.

Why the Nose?

What's the focus on the nose? It might seem playful, but the artwork celebrates a little-known natural marvel: scientists have found that in a fraction of a second, the reindeer's nose can heat the surrounding air it takes in by 80 degrees celsius, enabling the creature to thrive in harsh Arctic conditions. Scaling the nose to larger than human size, Sara notes, "generates a perception of inferiority that you as a person are not dominant over nature." The artist is a former writer, young adult author, and land defender, who is from a reindeer-herding family in northern Norway. "Perhaps that fosters the possibility to alter your outlook or trigger some modesty," she adds.

A Tribute to Traditional Ways

The maze-like installation is among various elements in Sara's immersive art project honoring the heritage, knowledge, and philosophy of the Sámi, the sole native group in Europe. Semi-nomadic, the Sámi total roughly 100,000 people ranged across the Norwegian north, the Finnish Arctic, Sweden, and the Kola region (an region they call Sápmi). They've experienced oppression, integration policies, and eradication of their language by all four countries. Through highlighting the reindeer, an creature at the core of the Sámi belief system and founding narrative, the work also spotlights the group's struggles associated with the environmental emergency, property rights, and colonialism.

Symbolism in Elements

On the long access incline, there's a towering, eighty-five-foot sculpture of reindeer hides ensnared by power and light cables. It can be read as a metaphor for the political and economic systems limiting the Sámi. Like an electrical tower, part spiritual ascent, this part of the installation, named Goavve-, points to the Sámi name for an severe climatic event, in which dense layers of ice develop as changing temperatures liquefy and refreeze the snow, encasing the reindeers' main winter nourishment, lichen. The condition is a consequence of global heating, which is occurring up to four times faster in the Far North than in other regions.

Three years ago, I visited Sara in the Norwegian far north during a severe cold period and accompanied Sámi herders on their snowmobiles in chilly conditions as they hauled containers of food pellets on to the wind-scoured tundra to distribute by hand. These animals crowded round us, digging the slippery ground in vain for mossy morsels. This resource-intensive and demanding procedure is having a drastic influence on animal rearing—and on the animals' self-sufficiency. Yet the choice is starvation. As goavvi winters become commonplace, reindeer are dying—a number from lack of food, others drowning after falling into streams through prematurely melting ice. To some extent, the work is a monument to them. "With the layering of components, in a way I'm introducing the condition to London," says Sara.

Opposing Belief Systems

This artwork also emphasizes the clear contrast between the industrial view of energy as a resource to be exploited for profit and existence and the Sámi philosophy of energy as an inherent life force in creatures, people, and land. This venue's history as a fossil fuel plant is tied up in this, as is what the Sámi consider eco-imperialism by regional governments. As they strive to be standard bearers for clean sources, these states have locked horns with the Sámi over the construction of turbine fields, water power facilities, and digging operations on their traditional territory; the Sámi assert their fundamental freedoms, incomes, and traditions are endangered. "It's challenging being such a tiny group to stand your ground when the arguments are based on saving the world," Sara notes. "Extractivism has co-opted the language of ecology, but yet it's just attempting to find more suitable ways to maintain patterns of consumption."

Family Struggles

Sara and her kin have personally clashed with the national administration over its tightening policies on herding. A few years ago, Sara's sibling undertook a sequence of unsuccessful court actions over the required reduction of his livestock, ostensibly to stop overgrazing. As a show of solidarity, Sara created a extended series of pieces titled Pile O'Sápmi featuring a massive drape of 400 animal bones, which was shown at the 2017's event Documenta 14 and later acquired by the national institution, where it resides in the lobby.

The Role of Art in Awareness

For many Sámi, creative work seems the only sphere in which they can be listened to by the global community. Recently, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|