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Attendees to the renowned gallery are used to unexpected displays in its vast Turbine Hall. They've sunbathed under an man-made sun, slid down spiral slides, and observed AI-powered sea creatures hovering through the air. Yet this marks the first time they will be engaging themselves in the complex nose cavities of a reindeer. The newest creative installation for this immense space—created by Indigenous Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—encourages gallerygoers into a winding structure modeled after the scaled-up inside of a reindeer's nasal cavities. Upon entering, they can wander around or unwind on pelts, listening on headphones to community leaders imparting narratives and insights.

The Significance of the Nose

What's the focus on the nose? It may sound quirky, but the exhibit pays tribute to a little-known biological feat: researchers have uncovered that in less than one second, the reindeer's nose can warm the ambient air it takes in by eighty degrees, helping the creature to thrive in inhospitable Arctic climates. Scaling the nose to human-scale dimensions, Sara notes, "creates a sense of inferiority that you as a individual are not dominant over nature." The artist is a ex- writer, young adult author, and rights advocate, who comes from a pastoral family in northern Norway. "Maybe that creates the potential to change your outlook or trigger some modesty," she continues.

An Homage to Indigenous Heritage

The maze-like installation is among various elements in Sara's absorbing art project celebrating the heritage, understanding, and worldview of the Sámi, Europe's only Indigenous people. Partially migratory, the Sámi total approximately 100,000 people ranged across northern Norway, Finland, the Swedish Lapland, and the Russian Arctic (an area they call Sápmi). They've experienced discrimination, cultural suppression, and suppression of their tongue by all four nations. With an emphasis on the reindeer, an animal at the heart of the Sámi belief system and founding narrative, the installation also draws attention to the community's challenges connected to the global warming, property rights, and colonialism.

Symbolism in Elements

At the lengthy entrance ramp, there's a looming, 26-metre sculpture of skins entangled by power and light cables. It serves as a symbol for the governance and financial structures constraining the Sámi. Like an electrical tower, part heavenly staircase, this section of the artwork, titled Goavve-, points to the Sámi name for an severe climatic event, whereby thick sheets of ice form as changing weather thaw and solidify again the snow, trapping the reindeers' main cold-season food, fungus. The condition is a result of planetary warming, which is occurring up to much more rapidly in the Far North than elsewhere.

Previously, I traveled to see Sara in a remote town during a severe cold period and joined Sámi herders on their motorized sleds in biting cold as they carried carts of supplementary feed on to the wind-scoured tundra to distribute manually. The herd crowded round us, digging the frozen ground in vain for lichen-covered bits. This expensive and demanding procedure is having a significant effect on reindeer husbandry—and on the animals' independence. But the alternative is malnutrition. As these icy periods become frequent, reindeer are succumbing—some from starvation, others submerging after falling into streams through thinning ice sheets. In a sense, the installation is a tribute to them. "By overlapping of materials, in a way I'm transporting the goavvi to London," says Sara.

Opposing Perspectives

The sculpture also highlights the stark contrast between the modern view of electricity as a asset to be harnessed for economic benefit and survival and the Sámi philosophy of vitality as an natural life force in creatures, individuals, and nature. This venue's past as a fossil fuel plant is connected to this, as is what the Sámi see as environmental exploitation by Nordic countries. While attempting to be leaders for renewable energy, these states have clashed with the Sámi over the development of windfarms, hydroelectric dams, and digging operations on their traditional territory; the Sámi contend their fundamental freedoms, ways of life, and traditions are threatened. "It's hard being such a small minority to protect your rights when the reasons are grounded in saving the world," Sara observes. "Resource exploitation has appropriated the rhetoric of environmentalism, but yet it's just attempting to find better ways to persist in practices of use."

Family Struggles

Sara and her kin have themselves conflicted with the national administration over its tightening regulations on animal husbandry. A few years ago, Sara's sibling embarked on a sequence of finally failed lawsuits over the mandatory slaughter of his livestock, supposedly to stop excessive feeding. To back him, Sara produced a multi-year series of artworks called Pile O'Sápmi including a massive screen of numerous reindeer skulls, which was shown at the 2017's show Documenta 14 and later acquired by the National Museum of Oslo, where it is displayed in the entryway.

The Role of Art in Advocacy

For numerous Indigenous people, visual expression is the exclusive realm in which they can be understood by people of other nations. In 2022, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|