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Attendees to the renowned gallery are familiar to surprising displays in its spacious Turbine Hall. They have relaxed under an artificial sun, glided down spiral slides, and witnessed AI-powered sea creatures floating through the air. Yet this marks the initial time they will be engaging themselves in the detailed nose passages of a reindeer. The newest artistic project for this immense space—created by Indigenous Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—encourages visitors into a winding construction based on the scaled-up interior of a reindeer's nasal passages. Once inside, they can wander around or relax on pelts, tuning in on headphones to community leaders imparting stories and knowledge.

Why the Nose?

What's the focus on the nose? It might sound playful, but the exhibit pays tribute to a obscure scientific wonder: scientists have discovered that in less than one second, the reindeer's nose can warm the incoming air it takes in by 80°C, allowing the animal to endure in inhospitable Arctic temperatures. Enlarging the nose to larger than human size, Sara notes, "generates a feeling of insignificance that you as a individual are not dominant over nature." The artist is a ex- writer, writer for kids, and environmental activist, who is from a pastoral family in the Norwegian Arctic. "Possibly that fosters the chance to shift your viewpoint or spark some modesty," she states.

A Tribute to Indigenous Heritage

The labyrinthine structure is among various components in Sara's immersive art project celebrating the heritage, understanding, and beliefs of the Sámi, the continent's original inhabitants. Semi-nomadic, the Sámi total about 100,000 people ranged across the Norwegian north, the Finnish Arctic, the Swedish Lapland, and Russia's Kola Peninsula (an region they call Sápmi). They've experienced persecution, forced assimilation, and repression of their language by all four states. Through highlighting the reindeer, an animal at the center of the Sámi belief system and creation story, the art also highlights the community's challenges associated with the global warming, land dispossession, and colonialism.

Metaphor in Elements

On the lengthy access incline, there's a soaring, 26-metre structure of reindeer hides entangled by electrical wires. It can be read as a symbol for the governance and financial structures limiting the Sámi. Part pylon, part celestial ladder, this section of the artwork, called Goavve-, relates to the Sámi term for an severe climatic event, whereby solid coatings of ice appear as varying conditions melt and solidify again the snow, trapping the reindeers' key cold-season nourishment, moss. The condition is a result of global heating, which is happening up to much more rapidly in the Far North than globally.

A few years back, I met with Sara in the Norwegian far north during a icy season and joined Sámi herders on their snowmobiles in freezing temperatures as they hauled trailers of animal nutrition on to the exposed frozen landscape to dispense by hand. These animals surrounded round us, pawing the icy ground in vain attempts for vegetative bits. This costly and demanding process is having a drastic impact on animal rearing—and on the animals' self-sufficiency. However the other option is malnutrition. When such conditions become routine, reindeer are dying—a number from hunger, others suffocating after falling into water bodies through prematurely melting ice. On one level, the work is a tribute to them. "With the layering of materials, in a way I'm transporting the condition to London," says Sara.

Contrasting Perspectives

The sculpture also underscores the clear difference between the western understanding of energy as a commodity to be harnessed for profit and existence and the Sámi worldview of life force as an natural power in creatures, people, and land. This venue's history as a industrial facility is tied up in this, as is what the Sámi view as environmental exploitation by regional governments. As they strive to be leaders for renewable energy, these states have clashed with the Sámi over the development of turbine fields, hydroelectric dams, and mines on their native soil; the Sámi contend their human rights, ways of life, and way of life are threatened. "It's challenging being such a tiny group to defend yourself when the reasons are grounded in saving the world," Sara observes. "Mining practices has adopted the language of sustainability, but still it's just aiming to find alternative ways to continue practices of use."

Personal Conflicts

The artist and her kin have themselves clashed with the Norwegian government over its ever-stricter regulations on animal husbandry. In 2016, Sara's brother embarked on a set of unsuccessful court actions over the required reduction of his livestock, apparently to stop excessive feeding. To back him, Sara created a extended series of creations called Pile O'Sápmi comprising a colossal curtain of 400 cranial remains, which was shown at the 2017 event Documenta 14 and later obtained by the public gallery, where it hangs in the lobby.

Creative Expression as Advocacy

Among the community, creative work appears the only domain in which they can be heard by the global community. Two years ago, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|