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Guests to the renowned gallery are accustomed to unexpected displays in its vast Turbine Hall. They've relaxed under an simulated sun, slid down helter skelters, and witnessed automated sea creatures drifting through the air. But this marks the first time they will be engaging themselves in the intricate nose passages of a reindeer. The newest artist commission for this cavernous space—created by Indigenous Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—invites visitors into a labyrinthine structure modeled after the expanded inside of a reindeer's nose passages. Once inside, they can stroll around or chill out on skins, tuning in on earphones to Sámi elders telling tales and knowledge.

Focus on the Nasal Passages

Why the nose? It may seem whimsical, but the exhibit celebrates a obscure biological feat: experts have found that in under a second, the reindeer's nose can heat the ambient air it inhales by eighty degrees, helping the creature to thrive in harsh Arctic conditions. Enlarging the nose to bigger than a person, Sara says, "produces a sense of insignificance that you as a person are not superior over nature." Sara is a former writer, young adult author, and land defender, who comes from a herding family in northern Norway. "Maybe that fosters the chance to shift your outlook or trigger some humility," she continues.

An Homage to Indigenous Heritage

The winding design is part of a features in Sara's immersive art project honoring the heritage, science, and beliefs of the Sámi, the sole native group in Europe. Semi-nomadic, the Sámi total roughly 100,000 people distributed across the Norwegian north, the Finnish Arctic, Sweden, and Russia's Kola Peninsula (an region they call Sápmi). They've faced persecution, forced assimilation, and suppression of their tongue by all four countries. With an emphasis on the reindeer, an creature at the core of the Sámi belief system and creation story, the work also highlights the people's issues relating to the environmental emergency, loss of territory, and colonialism.

Meaning in Components

On the long entrance ramp, there's a towering, 26-meter sculpture of pelts entangled by electrical wires. It represents a analogy for the political and economic systems restricting the Sámi. Partly a utility pole, part heavenly staircase, this section of the artwork, titled Goavve-, refers to the Sámi term for an harsh environmental condition, wherein solid sheets of ice appear as varying temperatures liquefy and ice over the snow, locking in the reindeers' primary winter nourishment, lichen. The condition is a result of global heating, which is taking place up to much more rapidly in the Far North than in other regions.

Previously, I met with Sara in the Norwegian far north during a icy season and went with Sámi reindeer keepers on their motorized sleds in freezing temperatures as they carried trailers of supplementary feed on to the wind-scoured tundra to provide by hand. The reindeer gathered round us, digging the frozen ground in vain for vegetative morsels. This resource-intensive and demanding process is having a significant effect on animal rearing—and on the animals' independence. However the other option is death. When such conditions become frequent, reindeer are succumbing—a number from starvation, others suffocating after falling into lakes and rivers through thinning ice sheets. In a sense, the art is a tribute to them. "By overlapping of elements, in a way I'm introducing the goavvi to London," says Sara.

Contrasting Perspectives

The sculpture also underscores the clear contrast between the industrial view of electricity as a commodity to be harnessed for profit and existence and the Sámi worldview of energy as an natural life force in creatures, people, and nature. The gallery's history as a industrial facility is tied up in this, as is what the Sámi consider eco-imperialism by Scandinavian states. In their efforts to be leaders for sustainable power, Nordic nations have locked horns with the Sámi over the development of wind energy projects, hydroelectric dams, and digging operations on their traditional territory; the Sámi assert their fundamental freedoms, incomes, and way of life are threatened. "It's very difficult being such a limited population to stand your ground when the reasons are rooted in environmental protection," Sara observes. "Resource exploitation has appropriated the discourse of sustainability, but still it's just striving to find more suitable ways to continue patterns of expenditure."

Personal Conflicts

Sara and her relatives have personally conflicted with the state authorities over its tightening policies on herding. Previously, Sara's sibling initiated a series of unsuccessful legal cases over the required reduction of his animals, ostensibly to stop excessive feeding. In support, Sara developed a four-year set of artworks called Pile O'Sápmi including a huge screen of four hundred reindeer skulls, which was displayed at the the art exhibition Documenta 14 and later acquired by the national institution, where it resides in the entrance.

Creative Expression as Awareness

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