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Attendees to the renowned gallery are familiar to unusual displays in its expansive Turbine Hall. They've basked under an man-made sun, glided down spiral slides, and seen automated sea creatures hovering through the air. However this marks the inaugural time they will be engaging themselves in the intricate nasal chambers of a reindeer. The newest creative installation for this cavernous space—designed by Indigenous Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—invites patrons into a labyrinthine design inspired by the enlarged inside of a reindeer's nasal cavities. Upon entering, they can meander around or chill out on reindeer hides, listening on headphones to Sámi elders imparting narratives and knowledge.

Focus on the Nasal Passages

Why the nose? It may sound whimsical, but the exhibit honors a rarely recognized scientific wonder: experts have found that in under a second, the reindeer's nose can raise the temperature of the ambient air it breathes in by 80°C, enabling the animal to endure in harsh Arctic climates. Expanding the nose to bigger than a person, Sara notes, "produces a feeling of smallness that you as a person are not superior over nature." She is a ex- journalist, writer for kids, and rights advocate, who hails from a herding family in the far north of Norway. "Maybe that generates the chance to alter your perspective or trigger some humility," she adds.

A Celebration to Sámi Culture

The labyrinthine installation is among various features in Sara's engaging commission celebrating the traditions, understanding, and beliefs of the Sámi, the sole native group in Europe. Partially migratory, the Sámi number about 100,000 people distributed across northern Norway, the Finnish Arctic, the Swedish Lapland, and the Kola region (an territory they call Sápmi). They've faced discrimination, forced assimilation, and repression of their tongue by all four states. With an emphasis on the reindeer, an animal at the core of the Sámi belief system and creation story, the installation also spotlights the people's struggles connected to the global warming, loss of territory, and external control.

Metaphor in Elements

At the long access slope, there's a soaring, 26-meter sculpture of pelts trapped by utility lines. It represents a symbol for the governance and financial structures restricting the Sámi. Like an electrical tower, part celestial ladder, this section of the installation, titled Goavve-, refers to the Sámi name for an extreme weather phenomenon, wherein thick coatings of ice develop as varying conditions thaw and solidify again the snow, encasing the reindeers' primary winter sustenance, lichen. The condition is a outcome of planetary warming, which is happening up to at an accelerated rate in the Arctic than elsewhere.

Previously, I visited Sara in the Norwegian far north during a severe cold period and went with Sámi herders on their snowmobiles in biting cold as they hauled carts of supplementary feed on to the barren tundra to dispense through labor. The reindeer surrounded round us, scratching the frozen ground in futility for vegetative bits. This expensive and labour-intensive method is having a severe impact on herding practices—and on the animals' natural survival. However the alternative is death. As goavvi winters become frequent, reindeer are succumbing—some from hunger, others suffocating after falling into lakes and rivers through thinning ice sheets. In a sense, the installation is a monument to them. "By overlapping of components, in a way I'm introducing the goavvi to London," says Sara.

Contrasting Worldviews

The sculpture also highlights the stark divergence between the western view of power as a commodity to be exploited for economic benefit and livelihood and the Sámi philosophy of vitality as an natural essence in animals, humans, and the environment. This venue's legacy as a coal and oil power station is connected to this, as is what the Sámi view as green colonialism by Scandinavian states. As they strive to be exemplars for sustainable power, these states have locked horns with the Sámi over the building of turbine fields, water power facilities, and digging operations on their ancestral land; the Sámi contend their fundamental freedoms, incomes, and traditions are at risk. "It's hard being such a limited population to protect your rights when the arguments are grounded in saving the world," Sara comments. "Mining practices has adopted the language of ecology, but nonetheless it's just attempting to find better ways to continue practices of expenditure."

Individual Challenges

The artist and her family have themselves clashed with the Norwegian government over its ever-stricter rules on reindeer management. A few years ago, Sara's brother initiated a set of finally failed lawsuits over the forced culling of his herd, supposedly to stop overgrazing. To back him, Sara produced a extended series of artworks titled Pile O'Sápmi including a massive drape of 400 animal bones, which was displayed at the the event Documenta 14 and later obtained by the national institution, where it hangs in the entrance.

Art as Advocacy

For numerous Indigenous people, art appears the only realm in which they can be heard by the global community. Two years ago, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|