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Guests to the renowned gallery are used to surprising displays in its expansive Turbine Hall. They have relaxed under an artificial sun, descended down amusement rides, and seen automated jellyfish hovering through the air. However this marks the first time they will be engaging themselves in the intricate nasal chambers of a reindeer. The current creative installation for this immense space—designed by Indigenous Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—welcomes visitors into a labyrinthine construction inspired by the scaled-up inside of a reindeer's nasal airways. Upon entering, they can meander around or chill out on pelts, tuning in on earphones to Sámi elders telling stories and insights.

Why the Nose?

What's the focus on the nose? It might appear whimsical, but the artwork honors a obscure natural marvel: researchers have uncovered that in under a second, the reindeer's nose can warm the surrounding air it inhales by eighty degrees, allowing the animal to survive in harsh Arctic conditions. Scaling the nose to bigger than a person, Sara says, "creates a feeling of insignificance that you as a individual are not superior over nature." Sara is a ex- reporter, writer for kids, and environmental activist, who is from a pastoral family in the far north of Norway. "Perhaps that generates the potential to shift your outlook or trigger some modesty," she states.

A Celebration to Sámi Culture

The labyrinthine design is part of a features in Sara's absorbing exhibition honoring the traditions, understanding, and philosophy of the Sámi, the sole native group in Europe. Semi-nomadic, the Sámi count approximately 100,000 people ranged across the Norwegian north, the Finnish Arctic, Sweden, and the Kola region (an area they call Sápmi). They've faced persecution, integration policies, and repression of their tongue by all four nations. By focusing on the reindeer, an creature at the heart of the Sámi mythology and founding narrative, the art also spotlights the community's challenges connected to the environmental emergency, loss of territory, and imperialism.

Symbolism in Materials

At the extended entrance ramp, there's a towering, 26-meter structure of skins trapped by utility lines. It serves as a analogy for the political and economic systems constraining the Sámi. Partly a utility pole, part spiritual ascent, this section of the installation, named Goavve-, relates to the Sámi name for an extreme weather phenomenon, wherein dense layers of ice form as varying conditions thaw and solidify again the snow, trapping the reindeers' key cold-season food, fungus. The condition is a result of global heating, which is occurring up to four times faster in the Arctic than globally.

Previously, I traveled to see Sara in a remote town during a severe cold period and went with Sámi reindeer keepers on their motorized sleds in chilly conditions as they transported carts of food pellets on to the wind-scoured frozen landscape to distribute by hand. These animals crowded round us, scratching the icy ground in futility for mossy bits. This costly and labour-intensive method is having a significant impact on herding practices—and on the animals' natural survival. Yet the choice is malnutrition. As goavvi winters become routine, reindeer are dying—some from hunger, others drowning after plunging into water bodies through thinning ice sheets. To some extent, the work is a tribute to them. "Through the stacking of elements, in a way I'm transporting the condition to London," says Sara.

Diverging Perspectives

This artwork also underscores the stark difference between the modern view of electricity as a resource to be harnessed for economic benefit and existence and the Sámi philosophy of energy as an natural essence in creatures, individuals, and land. The gallery's history as a industrial facility is tied up in this, as is what the Sámi view as environmental exploitation by regional governments. While attempting to be leaders for renewable energy, Scandinavian countries have locked horns with the Sámi over the construction of wind energy projects, water power facilities, and extraction sites on their ancestral land; the Sámi assert their legal protections, livelihoods, and culture are at risk. "It's challenging being such a limited population to protect your rights when the justifications are based on environmental protection," Sara notes. "Mining practices has appropriated the rhetoric of sustainability, but yet it's just attempting to find more suitable ways to maintain habits of expenditure."

Personal Conflicts

The artist and her family have personally clashed with the Norwegian government over its increasingly stringent regulations on herding. A few years ago, Sara's brother initiated a series of ultimately unsuccessful court actions over the required reduction of his livestock, supposedly to stop vegetation depletion. To back him, Sara developed a extended set of pieces named Pile O'Sápmi featuring a massive screen of 400 cranial remains, which was exhibited at the 2017 event Documenta 14 and later purchased by the national institution, where it is displayed in the entrance.

Creative Expression as Activism

For numerous Indigenous people, visual expression seems the sole sphere in which they can be understood by people of other nations. Two years ago, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|