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Guests to the renowned gallery are used to unusual experiences in its vast Turbine Hall. They've sunbathed under an simulated sun, slid down amusement rides, and observed AI-powered sea creatures hovering through the air. But this marks the inaugural time they will be immersing themselves in the complex nose chambers of a reindeer. The current creative installation for this cavernous space—developed by Native Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—welcomes patrons into a winding construction inspired by the scaled-up interior of a reindeer's nasal cavities. Upon entering, they can meander around or unwind on skins, listening on earphones to tribal seniors imparting tales and insights.

Focus on the Nasal Passages

What's the focus on the nose? It might appear playful, but the exhibit celebrates a rarely recognized scientific wonder: experts have uncovered that in under a second, the reindeer's nose can warm the incoming air it takes in by eighty degrees, helping the creature to thrive in extreme Arctic climates. Enlarging the nose to larger than human size, Sara explains, "produces a perception of inferiority that you as a person are not dominant over nature." The artist is a former journalist, young adult author, and land defender, who comes from a herding family in the far north of Norway. "Maybe that creates the potential to change your perspective or spark some humbleness," she adds.

A Celebration to Sámi Culture

The winding installation is among various components in Sara's immersive exhibition honoring the traditions, knowledge, and worldview of the Sámi, the sole native group in Europe. Partially migratory, the Sámi number approximately 100,000 people spread across northern Norway, the Finnish Arctic, Sweden, and the Russian Arctic (an territory they call Sápmi). They've experienced discrimination, forced assimilation, and repression of their tongue by all four countries. Through highlighting the reindeer, an animal at the center of the Sámi mythology and founding narrative, the art also spotlights the community's challenges associated with the environmental emergency, loss of territory, and external control.

Meaning in Materials

On the lengthy entry incline, there's a towering, 26-metre structure of skins trapped by utility lines. It represents a metaphor for the political and economic systems constraining the Sámi. Like an electrical tower, part heavenly staircase, this component of the installation, named Goavve-, refers to the Sámi term for an extreme weather phenomenon, in which dense sheets of ice appear as fluctuating conditions liquefy and ice over the snow, encasing the reindeers' main cold-season nourishment, fungus. This phenomenon is a outcome of climate change, which is happening up to at an accelerated rate in the Arctic than globally.

Three years ago, I traveled to see Sara in Guovdageaidnu during a goavvi winter and went with Sámi reindeer keepers on their motorized sleds in freezing temperatures as they carried trailers of animal nutrition on to the exposed frozen landscape to provide by hand. The herd surrounded round us, digging the slippery ground in futility for vegetative morsels. This resource-intensive and labour-intensive process is having a significant influence on herding practices—and on the animals' natural survival. But the other option is death. As these icy periods become commonplace, reindeer are succumbing—a number from lack of food, others drowning after plunging into streams through unstable frozen surfaces. In a sense, the art is a monument to them. "By overlapping of elements, in a way I'm transporting the goavvi to London," says Sara.

Diverging Perspectives

This artwork also highlights the stark difference between the industrial view of electricity as a resource to be exploited for gain and survival and the Sámi worldview of vitality as an natural power in animals, humans, and nature. This venue's history as a fossil fuel plant is tied up in this, as is what the Sámi view as green colonialism by regional governments. While attempting to be leaders for renewable energy, Nordic nations have clashed with the Sámi over the construction of windfarms, hydroelectric dams, and digging operations on their native soil; the Sámi argue their human rights, ways of life, and way of life are at risk. "It's very difficult being such a limited population to stand your ground when the justifications are rooted in global sustainability," Sara observes. "Mining practices has co-opted the language of sustainability, but still it's just attempting to find alternative ways to maintain patterns of expenditure."

Personal Struggles

Sara and her family have themselves conflicted with the Norwegian government over its tightening rules on herding. A few years ago, Sara's sibling undertook a set of finally failed court actions over the mandatory slaughter of his livestock, apparently to stop excessive feeding. To back him, Sara created a extended collection of artworks called Pile O'Sápmi comprising a massive curtain of numerous reindeer skulls, which was displayed at the 2017's event Documenta 14 and later purchased by the public gallery, where it is displayed in the lobby.

The Role of Art in Advocacy

For numerous Indigenous people, creative work appears the sole sphere in which they can be understood by people of other nations. Recently, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|