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Visitors to the renowned gallery are accustomed to unusual experiences in its spacious Turbine Hall. They have basked under an simulated sun, glided down helter skelters, and seen automated jellyfish hovering through the air. But this marks the first time they will be venturing themselves in the intricate nose cavities of a reindeer. The latest artistic project for this cavernous space—created by Native Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—encourages patrons into a labyrinthine design based on the expanded inside of a reindeer's nasal cavities. Upon entering, they can meander around or chill out on pelts, tuning in on headphones to community leaders telling narratives and insights.

The Significance of the Nose

Why the nose? It may seem playful, but the installation honors a rarely recognized biological feat: researchers have uncovered that in less than one second, the reindeer's nose can raise the temperature of the surrounding air it takes in by 80 degrees celsius, enabling the animal to thrive in extreme Arctic temperatures. Expanding the nose to bigger than a person, Sara says, "generates a perception of inferiority that you as a person are not superior over nature." The artist is a former writer, children's author, and land defender, who is from a herding family in northern Norway. "Maybe that generates the possibility to change your viewpoint or trigger some humility," she continues.

A Tribute to Indigenous Heritage

The maze-like installation is one of several elements in Sara's immersive commission honoring the culture, science, and beliefs of the Sámi, the sole native group in Europe. Semi-nomadic, the Sámi number about 100,000 people spread across the Norwegian north, the Finnish Arctic, the Swedish Lapland, and the Kola region (an territory they call Sápmi). They've experienced oppression, cultural suppression, and repression of their language by all four countries. With an emphasis on the reindeer, an creature at the center of the Sámi belief system and creation story, the work also highlights the community's struggles relating to the environmental emergency, land dispossession, and imperialism.

Symbolism in Components

Along the long access slope, there's a towering, 26-metre sculpture of reindeer hides entangled by utility lines. It serves as a symbol for the governance and financial structures limiting the Sámi. Part pylon, part heavenly staircase, this part of the exhibit, named Goavve-, points to the Sámi term for an harsh environmental condition, in which thick sheets of ice develop as varying weather thaw and ice over the snow, encasing the reindeers' main cold-season nourishment, fungus. The condition is a result of global heating, which is taking place up to four times faster in the Far North than in other regions.

A few years back, I traveled to see Sara in a remote town during a icy season and accompanied Sámi herders on their motorized sleds in freezing temperatures as they hauled carts of supplementary feed on to the wind-scoured tundra to provide manually. The herd surrounded round us, scratching the icy ground in futility for lichen-covered bits. This costly and demanding procedure is having a drastic impact on animal rearing—and on the animals' natural survival. However the choice is malnutrition. As these icy periods become commonplace, reindeer are perishing—some from hunger, others drowning after plunging into lakes and rivers through prematurely melting ice. To some extent, the installation is a monument to them. "With the layering of elements, in a way I'm introducing the goavvi to London," says Sara.

Diverging Belief Systems

This artwork also emphasizes the stark divergence between the modern view of power as a asset to be harnessed for gain and existence and the Sámi worldview of vitality as an innate life force in animals, individuals, and land. This venue's past as a fossil fuel plant is connected to this, as is what the Sámi view as eco-imperialism by regional governments. While attempting to be leaders for clean sources, these states have clashed with the Sámi over the development of windfarms, hydroelectric dams, and digging operations on their traditional territory; the Sámi assert their human rights, ways of life, and culture are at risk. "It's challenging being such a small minority to defend yourself when the reasons are grounded in saving the world," Sara observes. "Extractivism has co-opted the language of sustainability, but nonetheless it's just attempting to find alternative ways to continue habits of consumption."

Individual Conflicts

She and her family have themselves disagreed with the state authorities over its increasingly stringent policies on herding. A few years ago, Sara's brother initiated a series of ultimately unsuccessful legal cases over the required reduction of his livestock, ostensibly to stop excessive feeding. To back him, Sara developed a extended collection of pieces titled Pile O'Sápmi featuring a colossal drape of four hundred reindeer skulls, which was displayed at the the event Documenta 14 and later acquired by the national institution, where it hangs in the entryway.

The Role of Art in Awareness

Among the community, creative work seems the exclusive domain in which they can be heard by people of other nations. Two years ago, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|