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Visitors to the renowned gallery are familiar to unexpected experiences in its expansive Turbine Hall. They've basked under an artificial sun, glided down amusement rides, and witnessed AI-powered jellyfish hovering through the air. But this marks the initial time they will be engaging themselves in the complex nasal cavities of a reindeer. The newest creative installation for this cavernous space—designed by Native Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—encourages visitors into a labyrinthine structure based on the expanded interior of a reindeer's nose airways. Inside, they can meander around or unwind on skins, tuning in on earphones to Sámi elders sharing stories and wisdom.

The Significance of the Nose

Why the nose? It may seem whimsical, but the exhibit honors a little-known scientific wonder: researchers have uncovered that in a fraction of a second, the reindeer's nose can heat the ambient air it takes in by 80°C, helping the creature to survive in inhospitable Arctic temperatures. Enlarging the nose to human-scale dimensions, Sara explains, "produces a sense of smallness that you as a individual are not superior over nature." She is a former writer, young adult author, and rights advocate, who is from a pastoral family in the far north of Norway. "Maybe that creates the chance to change your outlook or spark some humility," she continues.

A Tribute to Traditional Ways

The labyrinthine structure is among various components in Sara's immersive commission celebrating the traditions, understanding, and beliefs of the Sámi, the continent's original inhabitants. Semi-nomadic, the Sámi count approximately 100,000 people spread across northern Norway, Finland, the Swedish Lapland, and the Russian Arctic (an area they call Sápmi). They've endured oppression, cultural suppression, and eradication of their tongue by all four nations. Through highlighting the reindeer, an animal at the center of the Sámi mythology and founding narrative, the work also highlights the community's challenges associated with the environmental emergency, land dispossession, and colonialism.

Metaphor in Components

On the lengthy entrance slope, there's a towering, eighty-five-foot sculpture of reindeer hides entangled by power and light cables. It serves as a analogy for the political and economic systems constraining the Sámi. Part pylon, part heavenly staircase, this part of the artwork, titled Goavve-, refers to the Sámi word for an harsh environmental condition, in which dense layers of ice form as fluctuating weather liquefy and ice over the snow, locking in the reindeers' key cold-season sustenance, fungus. The condition is a result of planetary warming, which is occurring up to four times faster in the Polar region than elsewhere.

Previously, I visited Sara in the Norwegian far north during a goavvi winter and joined Sámi pastoralists on their motorized sleds in freezing temperatures as they hauled trailers of food pellets on to the exposed tundra to provide through labor. The reindeer surrounded round us, pawing the slippery ground in vain attempts for mossy bits. This costly and demanding procedure is having a severe influence on reindeer husbandry—and on the animals' independence. However the choice is starvation. When such conditions become routine, reindeer are dying—some from lack of food, others drowning after sinking in lakes and rivers through thinning ice sheets. On one level, the work is a monument to them. "Through the stacking of elements, in a way I'm bringing the condition to London," says Sara.

Contrasting Worldviews

The installation also highlights the clear contrast between the western understanding of energy as a asset to be harnessed for profit and existence and the Sámi philosophy of energy as an innate life force in creatures, individuals, and land. The gallery's legacy as a coal and oil power station is linked with this, as is what the Sámi view as environmental exploitation by regional governments. In their efforts to be exemplars for renewable energy, Scandinavian countries have disagreed with the Sámi over the construction of turbine fields, river barriers, and extraction sites on their traditional territory; the Sámi assert their human rights, livelihoods, and culture are threatened. "It's challenging being such a tiny group to protect your rights when the arguments are rooted in saving the world," Sara comments. "Mining practices has appropriated the discourse of ecology, but nonetheless it's just attempting to find more suitable ways to persist in patterns of use."

Personal Conflicts

She and her family have personally clashed with the national administration over its ever-stricter regulations on animal husbandry. In 2016, Sara's brother undertook a series of finally failed court actions over the required reduction of his herd, apparently to stop excessive feeding. In support, Sara developed a multi-year collection of pieces named Pile O'Sápmi comprising a massive curtain of four hundred reindeer skulls, which was displayed at the 2017's event Documenta 14 and later acquired by the public gallery, where it hangs in the entrance.

The Role of Art in Advocacy

For many Sámi, visual expression is the exclusive realm in which they can be understood by outsiders. Two years ago, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|