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Visitors to the renowned gallery are accustomed to surprising displays in its expansive Turbine Hall. They have sunbathed under an artificial sun, slid down amusement rides, and observed automated sea creatures drifting through the air. Yet this marks the inaugural time they will be venturing themselves in the complex nose passages of a reindeer. The newest artistic project for this huge space—created by Native Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—encourages patrons into a winding design inspired by the expanded inside of a reindeer's nasal passages. Upon entering, they can stroll around or relax on reindeer hides, tuning in on earphones to Sámi elders telling tales and insights.

The Significance of the Nose

What's the focus on the nose? It might sound whimsical, but the installation honors a little-known scientific wonder: scientists have uncovered that in less than one second, the reindeer's nose can warm the incoming air it takes in by eighty degrees, helping the creature to endure in inhospitable Arctic conditions. Scaling the nose to bigger than a person, Sara says, "produces a feeling of insignificance that you as a human being are not in control over nature." The artist is a former journalist, young adult author, and land defender, who is from a herding family in the far north of Norway. "Perhaps that fosters the chance to change your viewpoint or spark some humility," she states.

A Tribute to Traditional Ways

The maze-like structure is among various features in Sara's engaging exhibition showcasing the heritage, understanding, and philosophy of the Sámi, the continent's original inhabitants. Traditionally mobile, the Sámi total about 100,000 people spread across the Norwegian north, the Finnish Arctic, Sweden, and the Russian Arctic (an region they call Sápmi). They have endured discrimination, integration policies, and repression of their dialect by all four nations. Through highlighting the reindeer, an creature at the center of the Sámi belief system and founding narrative, the art also spotlights the community's struggles connected to the climate crisis, loss of territory, and imperialism.

Metaphor in Materials

Along the long entrance ramp, there's a looming, 26-metre structure of pelts entangled by utility lines. It can be read as a analogy for the governance and financial structures constraining the Sámi. Like an electrical tower, part heavenly staircase, this component of the artwork, titled Goavve-, points to the Sámi word for an severe climatic event, in which solid sheets of ice appear as fluctuating temperatures thaw and solidify again the snow, trapping the reindeers' key winter sustenance, moss. This phenomenon is a outcome of planetary warming, which is occurring up to at an accelerated rate in the Far North than in other regions.

Three years ago, I visited Sara in the Norwegian far north during a severe cold period and went with Sámi reindeer keepers on their motorized sleds in chilly conditions as they hauled containers of animal nutrition on to the wind-scoured tundra to provide through labor. These animals gathered round us, scratching the slippery ground in vain attempts for lichen-covered morsels. This expensive and laborious procedure is having a significant influence on reindeer husbandry—and on the animals' natural survival. But the other option is malnutrition. As goavvi winters become routine, reindeer are succumbing—some from lack of food, others submerging after falling into streams through unstable frozen surfaces. To some extent, the installation is a memorial to them. "Through the stacking of materials, in a way I'm introducing the goavvi to London," says Sara.

Diverging Belief Systems

The installation also emphasizes the stark contrast between the western interpretation of energy as a asset to be utilized for profit and livelihood and the Sámi philosophy of life force as an inherent essence in animals, people, and nature. This venue's past as a fossil fuel plant is tied up in this, as is what the Sámi see as green colonialism by Nordic countries. While attempting to be leaders for clean sources, Nordic nations have clashed with the Sámi over the building of wind energy projects, water power facilities, and mines on their ancestral land; the Sámi contend their fundamental freedoms, ways of life, and way of life are threatened. "It's challenging being such a small minority to stand your ground when the arguments are based on global sustainability," Sara observes. "Resource exploitation has adopted the rhetoric of ecology, but yet it's just attempting to find better ways to continue habits of expenditure."

Personal Conflicts

Sara and her relatives have personally clashed with the Norwegian government over its tightening policies on reindeer management. A few years ago, Sara's sibling embarked on a set of unsuccessful lawsuits over the mandatory slaughter of his livestock, supposedly to stop vegetation depletion. In support, Sara developed a four-year series of creations titled Pile O'Sápmi featuring a huge curtain of numerous reindeer skulls, which was displayed at the 2017's show Documenta 14 and later acquired by the National Museum of Oslo, where it hangs in the lobby.

Art as Activism

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