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Attendees to the renowned gallery are accustomed to surprising encounters in its spacious Turbine Hall. They've basked under an man-made sun, slid down spiral slides, and witnessed AI-powered jellyfish floating through the air. But this marks the initial time they will be engaging themselves in the intricate nasal passages of a reindeer. The newest creative installation for this cavernous space—created by Indigenous Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—welcomes patrons into a labyrinthine structure modeled after the expanded interior of a reindeer's nasal passages. Inside, they can stroll around or relax on skins, listening on earphones to community leaders imparting stories and insights.

Focus on the Nasal Passages

Why choose the nasal structure? It could appear playful, but the exhibit celebrates a rarely recognized biological feat: scientists have uncovered that in a fraction of a second, the reindeer's nose can warm the ambient air it inhales by 80°C, helping the creature to survive in inhospitable Arctic temperatures. Scaling the nose to human-scale dimensions, Sara says, "generates a perception of insignificance that you as a human being are not dominant over nature." The artist is a former reporter, writer for kids, and rights advocate, who comes from a herding family in the Norwegian Arctic. "Maybe that fosters the possibility to alter your viewpoint or spark some humbleness," she continues.

An Homage to Traditional Ways

The labyrinthine design is part of a features in Sara's engaging art project showcasing the culture, science, and worldview of the Sámi, Europe's only Indigenous people. Traditionally mobile, the Sámi count roughly 100,000 people distributed across the Norwegian north, Finland, the Swedish Lapland, and the Kola region (an region they call Sápmi). They have experienced persecution, integration policies, and repression of their tongue by all four nations. By focusing on the reindeer, an creature at the heart of the Sámi cosmology and creation story, the work also spotlights the community's challenges connected to the environmental emergency, property rights, and imperialism.

Metaphor in Materials

At the long access ramp, there's a towering, 26-metre structure of skins entangled by power and light cables. It serves as a symbol for the societal frameworks restricting the Sámi. Part pylon, part heavenly staircase, this part of the installation, named Goavve-, relates to the Sámi name for an harsh environmental condition, wherein dense coatings of ice appear as varying conditions thaw and refreeze the snow, encasing the reindeers' main winter food, moss. Goavvi is a result of climate change, which is taking place up to four times faster in the Polar region than in other regions.

Three years ago, I met with Sara in Guovdageaidnu during a icy season and accompanied Sámi reindeer keepers on their snowmobiles in chilly conditions as they transported carts of food pellets on to the barren Arctic plains to dispense through labor. These animals gathered round us, digging the slippery ground in vain attempts for mossy bits. This costly and laborious process is having a drastic effect on animal rearing—and on the animals' self-sufficiency. However the other option is death. As these icy periods become frequent, reindeer are dying—a number from hunger, others submerging after plunging into water bodies through thinning ice sheets. In a sense, the art is a memorial to them. "Through the stacking of components, in a way I'm introducing the goavvi to London," says Sara.

Diverging Worldviews

This artwork also emphasizes the clear divergence between the western view of power as a resource to be utilized for gain and survival and the Sámi worldview of life force as an innate life force in animals, individuals, and the environment. This venue's legacy as a coal and oil power station is linked with this, as is what the Sámi see as eco-imperialism by Scandinavian states. In their efforts to be exemplars for sustainable power, Nordic nations have disagreed with the Sámi over the construction of wind energy projects, hydroelectric dams, and digging operations on their native soil; the Sámi contend their fundamental freedoms, livelihoods, and culture are endangered. "It's challenging being such a limited population to defend yourself when the arguments are grounded in environmental protection," Sara comments. "Resource exploitation has adopted the discourse of sustainability, but yet it's just aiming to find more suitable ways to persist in patterns of expenditure."

Family Conflicts

The artist and her kin have personally disagreed with the Norwegian government over its increasingly stringent policies on reindeer management. In 2016, Sara's brother embarked on a series of ultimately unsuccessful legal cases over the required reduction of his animals, ostensibly to stop overgrazing. As a show of solidarity, Sara created a four-year collection of artworks named Pile O'Sápmi featuring a massive screen of 400 cranial remains, which was shown at the 2017 event Documenta 14 and later acquired by the National Museum of Oslo, where it is displayed in the entrance.

Creative Expression as Advocacy

Among the community, creative work seems the only realm in which they can be understood by people of other nations. Recently, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|