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Guests to the renowned gallery are familiar to unexpected displays in its expansive Turbine Hall. They've relaxed under an man-made sun, slid down spiral slides, and observed robotic sea creatures floating through the air. However this marks the inaugural time they will be engaging themselves in the complex nose cavities of a reindeer. The current artistic project for this immense space—created by Native Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—invites patrons into a winding design modeled after the enlarged inside of a reindeer's nose cavities. Upon entering, they can wander around or relax on pelts, listening on headphones to Sámi elders imparting stories and wisdom.

The Significance of the Nose

Why the nose? It might appear playful, but the artwork honors a rarely recognized scientific wonder: researchers have discovered that in a fraction of a second, the reindeer's nose can heat the ambient air it takes in by eighty degrees, enabling the creature to thrive in extreme Arctic climates. Expanding the nose to bigger than a person, Sara notes, "generates a perception of inferiority that you as a human being are not superior over nature." Sara is a former writer, children's author, and environmental activist, who is from a pastoral family in northern Norway. "Perhaps that fosters the possibility to alter your outlook or spark some humbleness," she adds.

A Celebration to Sámi Culture

The labyrinthine installation is one of several features in Sara's engaging art project honoring the heritage, knowledge, and philosophy of the Sámi, the sole native group in Europe. Partially migratory, the Sámi number about 100,000 people distributed across the Norwegian north, Finland, the Swedish Lapland, and the Kola region (an area they call Sápmi). They've faced oppression, integration policies, and eradication of their dialect by all four nations. By focusing on the reindeer, an animal at the heart of the Sámi belief system and creation story, the work also highlights the community's issues relating to the climate crisis, property rights, and imperialism.

Symbolism in Components

Along the long access incline, there's a towering, 26-metre structure of reindeer hides trapped by utility lines. It can be read as a symbol for the governance and financial structures constraining the Sámi. Part pylon, part spiritual ascent, this section of the installation, called Goavve-, refers to the Sámi word for an harsh environmental condition, wherein solid coatings of ice form as fluctuating weather thaw and ice over the snow, trapping the reindeers' primary cold-season food, fungus. This phenomenon is a outcome of global heating, which is taking place up to at an accelerated rate in the Polar region than elsewhere.

Previously, I visited Sara in the Norwegian far north during a icy season and joined Sámi reindeer keepers on their Arctic vehicles in freezing temperatures as they hauled containers of supplementary feed on to the wind-scoured frozen landscape to provide by hand. The reindeer crowded round us, pawing the icy ground in futility for vegetative pieces. This costly and demanding process is having a drastic effect on animal rearing—and on the animals' self-sufficiency. But the choice is death. As goavvi winters become commonplace, reindeer are dying—a number from hunger, others suffocating after sinking in water bodies through thinning ice sheets. On one level, the work is a tribute to them. "Through the stacking of elements, in a way I'm bringing the phenomenon to London," says Sara.

Opposing Perspectives

The sculpture also emphasizes the clear difference between the modern view of power as a resource to be utilized for profit and survival and the Sámi worldview of life force as an innate life force in animals, individuals, and the environment. This venue's past as a coal and oil power station is tied up in this, as is what the Sámi view as eco-imperialism by Scandinavian states. While attempting to be standard bearers for clean sources, Scandinavian countries have clashed with the Sámi over the construction of turbine fields, river barriers, and mines on their native soil; the Sámi assert their human rights, livelihoods, and traditions are at risk. "It's hard being such a small minority to stand your ground when the reasons are based on global sustainability," Sara notes. "Mining practices has co-opted the discourse of environmentalism, but nonetheless it's just attempting to find more suitable ways to maintain practices of consumption."

Personal Conflicts

The artist and her relatives have themselves clashed with the national administration over its increasingly stringent rules on reindeer management. Previously, Sara's sibling initiated a set of finally failed lawsuits over the required reduction of his animals, apparently to stop vegetation depletion. As a show of solidarity, Sara produced a four-year series of creations titled Pile O'Sápmi featuring a massive drape of four hundred cranial remains, which was displayed at the 2017's event Documenta 14 and later purchased by the public gallery, where it resides in the entryway.

Creative Expression as Activism

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