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Visitors to the renowned gallery are familiar to unexpected encounters in its vast Turbine Hall. They've sunbathed under an simulated sun, slid down amusement rides, and witnessed automated jellyfish drifting through the air. But this marks the initial time they will be engaging themselves in the complex nose chambers of a reindeer. The latest artistic project for this huge space—created by Native Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—invites visitors into a maze-like structure modeled after the enlarged interior of a reindeer's nasal cavities. Once inside, they can wander around or chill out on reindeer hides, tuning in on earphones to tribal seniors imparting tales and insights.

Focus on the Nasal Passages

Why choose the nasal structure? It might appear playful, but the installation pays tribute to a little-known natural marvel: experts have uncovered that in less than one second, the reindeer's nose can warm the incoming air it takes in by 80 degrees celsius, enabling the animal to endure in extreme Arctic conditions. Expanding the nose to larger than human size, Sara notes, "produces a feeling of inferiority that you as a human being are not in control over nature." She is a former writer, children's author, and land defender, who comes from a reindeer-herding family in the Norwegian Arctic. "Possibly that creates the potential to change your perspective or evoke some modesty," she states.

A Celebration to Sámi Culture

The labyrinthine structure is part of a elements in Sara's immersive commission celebrating the culture, understanding, and beliefs of the Sámi, the sole native group in Europe. Traditionally mobile, the Sámi number about 100,000 people distributed across northern Norway, Finland, Sweden, and the Kola region (an area they call Sápmi). They have experienced oppression, forced assimilation, and suppression of their dialect by all four nations. With an emphasis on the reindeer, an animal at the core of the Sámi cosmology and founding narrative, the installation also spotlights the people's struggles relating to the climate crisis, land dispossession, and external control.

Meaning in Elements

On the long entry incline, there's a looming, eighty-five-foot sculpture of reindeer hides trapped by power and light cables. It represents a analogy for the political and economic systems restricting the Sámi. Part pylon, part celestial ladder, this section of the installation, named Goavve-, points to the Sámi name for an harsh environmental condition, in which solid sheets of ice develop as varying conditions melt and refreeze the snow, trapping the reindeers' main winter nourishment, moss. This phenomenon is a result of planetary warming, which is taking place up to much more rapidly in the Far North than elsewhere.

A few years back, I traveled to see Sara in Guovdageaidnu during a severe cold period and accompanied Sámi herders on their snowmobiles in biting cold as they hauled containers of animal nutrition on to the exposed frozen landscape to provide through labor. The reindeer surrounded round us, pawing the icy ground in futility for mossy bits. This expensive and laborious process is having a severe impact on animal rearing—and on the animals' independence. But the choice is starvation. As these icy periods become commonplace, reindeer are succumbing—some from lack of food, others submerging after falling into water bodies through thinning ice sheets. To some extent, the work is a monument to them. "By overlapping of components, in a way I'm transporting the condition to London," says Sara.

Opposing Perspectives

The installation also underscores the stark contrast between the modern understanding of power as a resource to be exploited for profit and survival and the Sámi worldview of life force as an inherent power in animals, individuals, and nature. This venue's history as a industrial facility is connected to this, as is what the Sámi see as eco-imperialism by Scandinavian states. As they strive to be leaders for clean sources, these states have clashed with the Sámi over the development of windfarms, river barriers, and extraction sites on their traditional territory; the Sámi contend their human rights, livelihoods, and traditions are endangered. "It's very difficult being such a small minority to stand your ground when the justifications are based on saving the world," Sara comments. "Mining practices has appropriated the language of environmentalism, but nonetheless it's just attempting to find alternative ways to maintain habits of consumption."

Family Conflicts

She and her family have personally clashed with the state authorities over its increasingly stringent regulations on reindeer management. A few years ago, Sara's brother undertook a sequence of unsuccessful legal cases over the mandatory slaughter of his livestock, supposedly to stop overgrazing. In support, Sara created a four-year series of artworks named Pile O'Sápmi including a huge screen of 400 cranial remains, which was exhibited at the 2017's art exhibition Documenta 14 and later purchased by the national institution, where it is displayed in the lobby.

Art as Activism

For numerous Indigenous people, visual expression is the only domain in which they can be understood by the global community. Recently, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|