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Visitors to the renowned gallery are familiar to unexpected displays in its spacious Turbine Hall. They've sunbathed under an artificial sun, slid down amusement rides, and witnessed robotic jellyfish floating through the air. But this marks the initial time they will be immersing themselves in the complex nose chambers of a reindeer. The newest creative installation for this immense space—created by Indigenous Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—invites gallerygoers into a winding structure inspired by the expanded interior of a reindeer's nasal passages. Upon entering, they can stroll around or unwind on reindeer hides, tuning in on earphones to community leaders telling stories and knowledge.

Why the Nose?

What's the focus on the nose? It might sound playful, but the installation honors a obscure natural marvel: researchers have discovered that in less than one second, the reindeer's nose can warm the ambient air it takes in by eighty degrees, helping the animal to survive in extreme Arctic conditions. Scaling the nose to larger than human size, Sara explains, "generates a sense of inferiority that you as a individual are not superior over nature." She is a ex- reporter, children's author, and environmental activist, who is from a pastoral family in the Norwegian Arctic. "Maybe that creates the chance to change your perspective or evoke some modesty," she adds.

A Tribute to Sámi Culture

The maze-like installation is part of a features in Sara's engaging commission honoring the traditions, science, and beliefs of the Sámi, the sole native group in Europe. Traditionally mobile, the Sámi number about 100,000 people distributed across northern Norway, Finland, Sweden, and the Russian Arctic (an area they call Sápmi). They have endured discrimination, integration policies, and repression of their language by all four states. With an emphasis on the reindeer, an animal at the heart of the Sámi belief system and creation story, the art also highlights the community's challenges relating to the climate crisis, property rights, and colonialism.

Symbolism in Components

Along the long entry incline, there's a looming, 26-meter formation of skins trapped by utility lines. It can be read as a symbol for the governance and financial structures limiting the Sámi. Partly a utility pole, part spiritual ascent, this part of the installation, titled Goavve-, relates to the Sámi name for an severe climatic event, wherein dense coatings of ice appear as varying conditions thaw and ice over the snow, locking in the reindeers' key cold-season food, lichen. This phenomenon is a outcome of climate change, which is occurring up to much more rapidly in the Far North than in other regions.

Three years ago, I met with Sara in Guovdageaidnu during a icy season and accompanied Sámi pastoralists on their motorized sleds in biting cold as they carried trailers of supplementary feed on to the barren tundra to dispense through labor. The reindeer gathered round us, pawing the icy ground in vain attempts for vegetative morsels. This costly and labour-intensive process is having a significant effect on reindeer husbandry—and on the animals' independence. However the choice is starvation. As goavvi winters become frequent, reindeer are dying—a number from hunger, others drowning after sinking in water bodies through unstable frozen surfaces. To some extent, the work is a monument to them. "Through the stacking of components, in a way I'm bringing the phenomenon to London," says Sara.

Contrasting Perspectives

The installation also underscores the clear difference between the modern understanding of energy as a resource to be harnessed for economic benefit and survival and the Sámi worldview of life force as an innate life force in animals, individuals, and land. This venue's history as a fossil fuel plant is linked with this, as is what the Sámi consider green colonialism by Nordic countries. While attempting to be standard bearers for sustainable power, Scandinavian countries have clashed with the Sámi over the development of windfarms, river barriers, and mines on their traditional territory; the Sámi assert their legal protections, livelihoods, and traditions are endangered. "It's hard being such a limited population to defend yourself when the reasons are grounded in environmental protection," Sara comments. "Extractivism has appropriated the language of ecology, but still it's just attempting to find better ways to maintain practices of expenditure."

Personal Struggles

Sara and her relatives have personally clashed with the Norwegian government over its tightening policies on herding. A few years ago, Sara's sibling initiated a set of finally failed court actions over the required reduction of his livestock, ostensibly to stop overgrazing. As a show of solidarity, Sara developed a extended set of creations titled Pile O'Sápmi featuring a massive screen of four hundred cranial remains, which was exhibited at the 2017 art exhibition Documenta 14 and later purchased by the National Museum of Oslo, where it resides in the lobby.

Art as Awareness

For many Sámi, creative work appears the only domain in which they can be heard by people of other nations. In 2022, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|