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Guests to the renowned gallery are accustomed to unexpected encounters in its expansive Turbine Hall. They have basked under an artificial sun, glided down spiral slides, and witnessed AI-powered sea creatures drifting through the air. However this marks the first time they will be engaging themselves in the complex nasal passages of a reindeer. The current artist commission for this immense space—developed by Indigenous Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—encourages patrons into a labyrinthine construction based on the expanded interior of a reindeer's nose airways. Upon entering, they can meander around or relax on skins, listening on earphones to community leaders telling stories and knowledge.

Focus on the Nasal Passages

What's the focus on the nose? It might sound whimsical, but the installation honors a rarely recognized natural marvel: experts have found that in a fraction of a second, the reindeer's nose can raise the temperature of the ambient air it takes in by 80 degrees celsius, helping the animal to thrive in harsh Arctic conditions. Scaling the nose to human-scale dimensions, Sara notes, "generates a feeling of insignificance that you as a human being are not dominant over nature." The artist is a ex- journalist, young adult author, and land defender, who is from a herding family in the Norwegian Arctic. "Maybe that fosters the chance to shift your perspective or evoke some modesty," she states.

A Tribute to Indigenous Heritage

The winding structure is one of several components in Sara's absorbing art project celebrating the traditions, understanding, and beliefs of the Sámi, the continent's original inhabitants. Partially migratory, the Sámi count about 100,000 people ranged across the Norwegian north, the Finnish Arctic, the Swedish Lapland, and the Kola region (an area they call Sápmi). They have faced oppression, integration policies, and suppression of their tongue by all four countries. Through highlighting the reindeer, an creature at the core of the Sámi cosmology and creation story, the work also draws attention to the people's issues associated with the climate crisis, land dispossession, and external control.

Meaning in Elements

Along the long entry incline, there's a towering, eighty-five-foot formation of skins trapped by electrical wires. It represents a metaphor for the political and economic systems limiting the Sámi. Partly a utility pole, part celestial ladder, this component of the exhibit, named Goavve-, refers to the Sámi name for an harsh environmental condition, wherein dense sheets of ice develop as fluctuating conditions thaw and solidify again the snow, encasing the reindeers' primary cold-season sustenance, moss. Goavvi is a outcome of planetary warming, which is happening up to four times faster in the Far North than elsewhere.

Previously, I traveled to see Sara in Guovdageaidnu during a goavvi winter and went with Sámi reindeer keepers on their motorized sleds in chilly conditions as they carried containers of food pellets on to the exposed tundra to provide manually. The reindeer crowded round us, scratching the icy ground in vain for mossy morsels. This resource-intensive and demanding process is having a severe impact on animal rearing—and on the animals' self-sufficiency. But the choice is starvation. As these icy periods become commonplace, reindeer are perishing—some from hunger, others suffocating after plunging into lakes and rivers through thinning ice sheets. In a sense, the work is a tribute to them. "By overlapping of materials, in a way I'm bringing the goavvi to London," says Sara.

Contrasting Belief Systems

The sculpture also underscores the clear difference between the industrial interpretation of electricity as a resource to be utilized for gain and survival and the Sámi worldview of vitality as an innate power in animals, people, and the environment. The gallery's history as a fossil fuel plant is tied up in this, as is what the Sámi see as eco-imperialism by regional governments. While attempting to be standard bearers for clean sources, Scandinavian countries have disagreed with the Sámi over the construction of turbine fields, water power facilities, and digging operations on their native soil; the Sámi assert their fundamental freedoms, incomes, and way of life are endangered. "It's hard being such a limited population to protect your rights when the arguments are based on saving the world," Sara observes. "Resource exploitation has co-opted the language of sustainability, but still it's just attempting to find better ways to maintain habits of expenditure."

Personal Struggles

The artist and her kin have personally conflicted with the state authorities over its increasingly stringent regulations on herding. In 2016, Sara's brother embarked on a set of unsuccessful lawsuits over the forced culling of his herd, apparently to stop vegetation depletion. In support, Sara created a multi-year series of pieces called Pile O'Sápmi comprising a massive curtain of four hundred reindeer skulls, which was shown at the 2017 show Documenta 14 and later acquired by the National Museum of Oslo, where it hangs in the entrance.

The Role of Art in Advocacy

For many Sámi, visual expression appears the exclusive sphere in which they can be listened to by the global community. In 2022, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|