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Guests to the renowned gallery are used to unexpected encounters in its expansive Turbine Hall. They've basked under an artificial sun, slid down spiral slides, and seen robotic sea creatures drifting through the air. Yet this marks the initial time they will be engaging themselves in the detailed nose chambers of a reindeer. The current artistic project for this cavernous space—designed by Native Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—encourages patrons into a maze-like design based on the enlarged inside of a reindeer's nose airways. Inside, they can wander around or chill out on skins, listening on earphones to Sámi elders imparting tales and wisdom.

The Significance of the Nose

Why the nose? It might appear whimsical, but the exhibit celebrates a rarely recognized natural marvel: scientists have discovered that in a fraction of a second, the reindeer's nose can heat the ambient air it takes in by 80 degrees celsius, helping the creature to survive in extreme Arctic conditions. Scaling the nose to bigger than a person, Sara says, "creates a sense of smallness that you as a individual are not superior over nature." Sara is a former reporter, writer for kids, and rights advocate, who is from a reindeer-herding family in northern Norway. "Possibly that generates the chance to shift your perspective or spark some humility," she continues.

A Tribute to Indigenous Heritage

The labyrinthine design is part of a features in Sara's immersive commission celebrating the heritage, understanding, and beliefs of the Sámi, Europe's only Indigenous people. Partially migratory, the Sámi count approximately 100,000 people distributed across the Norwegian north, the Finnish Arctic, Sweden, and the Russian Arctic (an area they call Sápmi). They've faced discrimination, cultural suppression, and suppression of their dialect by all four states. With an emphasis on the reindeer, an animal at the heart of the Sámi mythology and founding narrative, the art also draws attention to the group's issues connected to the climate crisis, property rights, and external control.

Meaning in Elements

On the extended entry incline, there's a looming, eighty-five-foot sculpture of skins ensnared by power and light cables. It serves as a analogy for the governance and financial structures limiting the Sámi. Partly a utility pole, part spiritual ascent, this part of the installation, named Goavve-, refers to the Sámi word for an harsh environmental condition, in which solid sheets of ice form as fluctuating temperatures melt and solidify again the snow, locking in the reindeers' key winter nourishment, moss. This phenomenon is a outcome of global heating, which is happening up to four times faster in the Arctic than elsewhere.

A few years back, I traveled to see Sara in Guovdageaidnu during a icy season and went with Sámi herders on their snowmobiles in biting cold as they hauled trailers of food pellets on to the wind-scoured Arctic plains to provide manually. The reindeer surrounded round us, pawing the frozen ground in futility for mossy pieces. This expensive and demanding process is having a significant impact on herding practices—and on the animals' self-sufficiency. Yet the other option is malnutrition. As these icy periods become commonplace, reindeer are succumbing—a number from hunger, others submerging after plunging into water bodies through unstable frozen surfaces. In a sense, the installation is a monument to them. "With the layering of materials, in a way I'm bringing the phenomenon to London," says Sara.

Opposing Belief Systems

The installation also emphasizes the sharp difference between the modern view of energy as a commodity to be harnessed for profit and livelihood and the Sámi philosophy of energy as an natural essence in animals, humans, and the environment. This venue's past as a coal and oil power station is connected to this, as is what the Sámi view as green colonialism by Nordic countries. In their efforts to be leaders for sustainable power, Nordic nations have locked horns with the Sámi over the construction of wind energy projects, water power facilities, and mines on their native soil; the Sámi argue their fundamental freedoms, ways of life, and way of life are endangered. "It's challenging being such a small minority to defend yourself when the justifications are based on saving the world," Sara observes. "Resource exploitation has co-opted the rhetoric of environmentalism, but nonetheless it's just attempting to find better ways to maintain habits of expenditure."

Personal Conflicts

She and her kin have themselves clashed with the Norwegian government over its tightening regulations on reindeer management. Previously, Sara's sibling initiated a series of unsuccessful court actions over the forced culling of his herd, apparently to stop excessive feeding. As a show of solidarity, Sara developed a four-year collection of creations called Pile O'Sápmi comprising a colossal screen of four hundred animal bones, which was shown at the the show Documenta 14 and later acquired by the national institution, where it is displayed in the entrance.

Creative Expression as Advocacy

Among the community, art seems the sole realm in which they can be listened to by the global community. Recently, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|