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Guests to the renowned gallery are used to unusual experiences in its expansive Turbine Hall. They have basked under an simulated sun, slid down amusement rides, and observed automated sea creatures floating through the air. However this marks the first time they will be venturing themselves in the complex nose cavities of a reindeer. The newest artist commission for this huge space—developed by Native Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—invites patrons into a labyrinthine construction inspired by the enlarged interior of a reindeer's nose cavities. Upon entering, they can stroll around or relax on skins, listening on headphones to Sámi elders telling narratives and insights.

The Significance of the Nose

What's the focus on the nose? It could seem playful, but the artwork honors a obscure biological feat: researchers have discovered that in less than one second, the reindeer's nose can raise the temperature of the incoming air it inhales by eighty degrees, helping the animal to thrive in inhospitable Arctic climates. Enlarging the nose to larger than human size, Sara says, "generates a feeling of insignificance that you as a person are not dominant over nature." The artist is a former reporter, children's author, and environmental activist, who comes from a herding family in the far north of Norway. "Maybe that generates the potential to change your perspective or trigger some modesty," she states.

A Tribute to Indigenous Heritage

The labyrinthine design is one of several components in Sara's immersive exhibition celebrating the heritage, knowledge, and philosophy of the Sámi, the continent's original inhabitants. Traditionally mobile, the Sámi number roughly 100,000 people distributed across the Norwegian north, the Finnish Arctic, the Swedish Lapland, and Russia's Kola Peninsula (an region they call Sápmi). They've faced discrimination, forced assimilation, and suppression of their language by all four states. Through highlighting the reindeer, an animal at the core of the Sámi belief system and origin tale, the art also spotlights the people's struggles associated with the environmental emergency, property rights, and imperialism.

Metaphor in Materials

At the extended entrance slope, there's a soaring, 26-meter structure of skins ensnared by power and light cables. It represents a metaphor for the societal frameworks restricting the Sámi. Like an electrical tower, part heavenly staircase, this component of the installation, named Goavve-, relates to the Sámi name for an extreme weather phenomenon, in which dense layers of ice appear as varying temperatures melt and refreeze the snow, locking in the reindeers' primary winter sustenance, moss. The condition is a outcome of global heating, which is occurring up to four times faster in the Arctic than elsewhere.

A few years back, I visited Sara in a remote town during a severe cold period and accompanied Sámi herders on their motorized sleds in chilly conditions as they transported containers of animal nutrition on to the wind-scoured Arctic plains to provide through labor. These animals crowded round us, digging the slippery ground in vain attempts for mossy pieces. This expensive and labour-intensive method is having a severe influence on reindeer husbandry—and on the animals' natural survival. Yet the other option is death. As goavvi winters become commonplace, reindeer are dying—a number from lack of food, others submerging after falling into streams through prematurely melting ice. On one level, the art is a monument to them. "With the layering of components, in a way I'm transporting the goavvi to London," says Sara.

Diverging Worldviews

This artwork also emphasizes the sharp contrast between the industrial view of power as a commodity to be harnessed for profit and livelihood and the Sámi worldview of life force as an inherent essence in creatures, individuals, and nature. This venue's past as a industrial facility is tied up in this, as is what the Sámi view as eco-imperialism by Scandinavian states. While attempting to be exemplars for sustainable power, Nordic nations have clashed with the Sámi over the building of wind energy projects, hydroelectric dams, and mines on their traditional territory; the Sámi assert their legal protections, livelihoods, and way of life are endangered. "It's very difficult being such a small minority to stand your ground when the reasons are based on saving the world," Sara notes. "Resource exploitation has adopted the language of ecology, but yet it's just aiming to find alternative ways to maintain practices of consumption."

Individual Struggles

The artist and her kin have personally clashed with the state authorities over its tightening policies on reindeer management. A few years ago, Sara's brother initiated a series of ultimately unsuccessful lawsuits over the forced culling of his animals, ostensibly to stop overgrazing. In support, Sara developed a multi-year series of artworks titled Pile O'Sápmi comprising a colossal screen of numerous reindeer skulls, which was exhibited at the the event Documenta 14 and later obtained by the public gallery, where it hangs in the entrance.

Creative Expression as Activism

Among the community, art appears the exclusive domain in which they can be listened to by the global community. In 2022, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|