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Attendees to the renowned gallery are accustomed to unusual encounters in its spacious Turbine Hall. They have basked under an artificial sun, slid down spiral slides, and observed robotic jellyfish floating through the air. But this marks the initial time they will be engaging themselves in the detailed nose cavities of a reindeer. The newest artistic project for this cavernous space—designed by Indigenous Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—welcomes patrons into a winding design based on the enlarged inside of a reindeer's nose airways. Upon entering, they can wander around or chill out on pelts, listening on headphones to community leaders imparting narratives and wisdom.

Why the Nose?

What's the focus on the nose? It might sound quirky, but the exhibit honors a obscure biological feat: researchers have found that in less than one second, the reindeer's nose can heat the ambient air it inhales by 80 degrees celsius, allowing the animal to survive in extreme Arctic climates. Scaling the nose to larger than human size, Sara notes, "generates a perception of insignificance that you as a human being are not in control over nature." The artist is a former journalist, writer for kids, and rights advocate, who hails from a reindeer-herding family in the Norwegian Arctic. "Possibly that creates the chance to shift your outlook or spark some humbleness," she adds.

A Celebration to Sámi Culture

The labyrinthine structure is one of several elements in Sara's engaging exhibition showcasing the culture, knowledge, and beliefs of the Sámi, the sole native group in Europe. Semi-nomadic, the Sámi total approximately 100,000 people spread across northern Norway, Finland, the Swedish Lapland, and the Russian Arctic (an territory they call Sápmi). They have endured persecution, integration policies, and repression of their tongue by all four countries. With an emphasis on the reindeer, an animal at the core of the Sámi cosmology and creation story, the installation also highlights the community's struggles associated with the climate crisis, land dispossession, and external control.

Metaphor in Components

Along the long entrance incline, there's a soaring, eighty-five-foot formation of reindeer hides entangled by power and light cables. It represents a analogy for the societal frameworks constraining the Sámi. Partly a utility pole, part heavenly staircase, this section of the exhibit, called Goavve-, relates to the Sámi name for an severe climatic event, wherein dense layers of ice appear as varying weather melt and refreeze the snow, locking in the reindeers' primary winter sustenance, fungus. The condition is a consequence of global heating, which is happening up to much more rapidly in the Arctic than elsewhere.

Three years ago, I visited Sara in a remote town during a goavvi winter and went with Sámi reindeer keepers on their Arctic vehicles in freezing temperatures as they transported carts of animal nutrition on to the wind-scoured tundra to provide through labor. The herd gathered round us, digging the frozen ground in vain for mossy morsels. This costly and laborious procedure is having a drastic influence on herding practices—and on the animals' independence. Yet the choice is malnutrition. As these icy periods become commonplace, reindeer are succumbing—some from hunger, others suffocating after falling into water bodies through thinning ice sheets. In a sense, the installation is a monument to them. "With the layering of elements, in a way I'm introducing the phenomenon to London," says Sara.

Contrasting Belief Systems

This artwork also underscores the stark difference between the industrial view of energy as a asset to be exploited for gain and existence and the Sámi worldview of life force as an inherent essence in creatures, individuals, and nature. The gallery's past as a industrial facility is connected to this, as is what the Sámi view as eco-imperialism by regional governments. In their efforts to be leaders for sustainable power, Scandinavian countries have disagreed with the Sámi over the building of wind energy projects, river barriers, and extraction sites on their ancestral land; the Sámi assert their human rights, livelihoods, and way of life are at risk. "It's very difficult being such a small minority to protect your rights when the justifications are based on global sustainability," Sara observes. "Extractivism has co-opted the language of ecology, but still it's just striving to find more suitable ways to maintain patterns of use."

Personal Struggles

She and her family have personally disagreed with the Norwegian government over its tightening regulations on animal husbandry. A few years ago, Sara's sibling initiated a sequence of unsuccessful legal cases over the required reduction of his animals, ostensibly to stop excessive feeding. In support, Sara produced a multi-year collection of creations called Pile O'Sápmi comprising a huge drape of numerous reindeer skulls, which was exhibited at the 2017's event Documenta 14 and later purchased by the National Museum of Oslo, where it hangs in the entryway.

The Role of Art in Advocacy

For many Sámi, art seems the exclusive sphere in which they can be heard by people of other nations. Recently, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|