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Attendees to the renowned gallery are familiar to surprising displays in its spacious Turbine Hall. They have basked under an simulated sun, descended down spiral slides, and observed automated sea creatures drifting through the air. But this marks the initial time they will be venturing themselves in the detailed nasal chambers of a reindeer. The current artist commission for this cavernous space—developed by Indigenous Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—invites visitors into a winding structure based on the expanded inside of a reindeer's nasal passages. Once inside, they can stroll around or chill out on pelts, listening on headphones to community leaders imparting narratives and wisdom.

Focus on the Nasal Passages

Why the nose? It may seem whimsical, but the exhibit pays tribute to a obscure biological feat: experts have found that in a fraction of a second, the reindeer's nose can raise the temperature of the surrounding air it takes in by 80°C, helping the animal to endure in harsh Arctic conditions. Scaling the nose to larger than human size, Sara says, "generates a perception of smallness that you as a individual are not in control over nature." She is a ex- reporter, young adult author, and environmental activist, who hails from a reindeer-herding family in northern Norway. "Maybe that generates the possibility to shift your perspective or spark some modesty," she continues.

A Tribute to Sámi Culture

The winding design is part of a components in Sara's immersive art project celebrating the traditions, knowledge, and worldview of the Sámi, the sole native group in Europe. Traditionally mobile, the Sámi count about 100,000 people spread across the Norwegian north, the Finnish Arctic, Sweden, and the Kola region (an area they call Sápmi). They've experienced discrimination, cultural suppression, and eradication of their tongue by all four states. Through highlighting the reindeer, an creature at the heart of the Sámi belief system and origin tale, the work also highlights the group's struggles associated with the environmental emergency, land dispossession, and colonialism.

Metaphor in Elements

On the long entry ramp, there's a looming, eighty-five-foot sculpture of reindeer hides trapped by power and light cables. It can be read as a analogy for the societal frameworks restricting the Sámi. Partly a utility pole, part spiritual ascent, this part of the installation, titled Goavve-, refers to the Sámi name for an harsh environmental condition, whereby thick sheets of ice appear as changing temperatures melt and refreeze the snow, locking in the reindeers' main cold-season food, fungus. The condition is a outcome of planetary warming, which is occurring up to at an accelerated rate in the Arctic than globally.

Previously, I met with Sara in Guovdageaidnu during a icy season and went with Sámi herders on their snowmobiles in biting cold as they carried carts of food pellets on to the wind-scoured tundra to provide by hand. The reindeer gathered round us, pawing the slippery ground in futility for lichen-covered bits. This resource-intensive and labour-intensive process is having a severe effect on reindeer husbandry—and on the animals' natural survival. However the other option is starvation. As these icy periods become frequent, reindeer are dying—some from lack of food, others drowning after sinking in streams through thinning ice sheets. To some extent, the work is a memorial to them. "Through the stacking of elements, in a way I'm transporting the phenomenon to London," says Sara.

Diverging Worldviews

This artwork also emphasizes the clear divergence between the modern understanding of energy as a commodity to be utilized for economic benefit and existence and the Sámi worldview of energy as an inherent power in animals, humans, and the environment. This venue's history as a fossil fuel plant is connected to this, as is what the Sámi consider green colonialism by Scandinavian states. While attempting to be leaders for sustainable power, these states have clashed with the Sámi over the construction of wind energy projects, water power facilities, and extraction sites on their ancestral land; the Sámi assert their legal protections, incomes, and way of life are threatened. "It's challenging being such a tiny group to protect your rights when the arguments are rooted in saving the world," Sara notes. "Mining practices has co-opted the rhetoric of ecology, but yet it's just attempting to find more suitable ways to persist in patterns of expenditure."

Individual Challenges

The artist and her relatives have personally disagreed with the Norwegian government over its ever-stricter policies on reindeer management. In 2016, Sara's brother initiated a sequence of finally failed lawsuits over the required reduction of his livestock, apparently to stop vegetation depletion. To back him, Sara produced a multi-year series of pieces called Pile O'Sápmi featuring a massive screen of numerous animal bones, which was displayed at the the art exhibition Documenta 14 and later obtained by the National Museum of Oslo, where it resides in the lobby.

Art as Advocacy

For many Sámi, creative work is the exclusive domain in which they can be heard by the global community. In 2022, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|