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Visitors to the renowned gallery are familiar to unexpected displays in its vast Turbine Hall. They've basked under an artificial sun, glided down amusement rides, and observed AI-powered jellyfish hovering through the air. Yet this marks the inaugural time they will be immersing themselves in the intricate nasal cavities of a reindeer. The latest artist commission for this immense space—designed by Indigenous Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—welcomes patrons into a labyrinthine design inspired by the enlarged inside of a reindeer's nasal cavities. Once inside, they can stroll around or unwind on pelts, tuning in on headphones to community leaders imparting stories and insights.

Why the Nose?

What's the focus on the nose? It might sound quirky, but the exhibit pays tribute to a rarely recognized scientific wonder: researchers have uncovered that in under a second, the reindeer's nose can warm the incoming air it takes in by 80 degrees celsius, helping the creature to survive in inhospitable Arctic conditions. Enlarging the nose to human-scale dimensions, Sara says, "produces a sense of inferiority that you as a human being are not dominant over nature." She is a ex- journalist, young adult author, and rights advocate, who is from a pastoral family in the far north of Norway. "Possibly that generates the chance to shift your perspective or spark some humbleness," she continues.

A Celebration to Sámi Culture

The winding design is part of a components in Sara's absorbing commission celebrating the heritage, understanding, and beliefs of the Sámi, Europe's only Indigenous people. Semi-nomadic, the Sámi total about 100,000 people ranged across the Norwegian north, the Finnish Arctic, Sweden, and the Kola region (an territory they call Sápmi). They have faced oppression, cultural suppression, and suppression of their dialect by all four states. With an emphasis on the reindeer, an animal at the center of the Sámi mythology and creation story, the installation also draws attention to the community's struggles associated with the environmental emergency, loss of territory, and colonialism.

Symbolism in Materials

On the extended access incline, there's a towering, 26-metre structure of pelts entangled by utility lines. It represents a symbol for the societal frameworks limiting the Sámi. Partly a utility pole, part celestial ladder, this section of the artwork, named Goavve-, relates to the Sámi name for an harsh environmental condition, wherein dense coatings of ice appear as fluctuating weather melt and refreeze the snow, locking in the reindeers' main cold-season food, fungus. The condition is a consequence of planetary warming, which is taking place up to four times faster in the Far North than elsewhere.

Three years ago, I traveled to see Sara in Guovdageaidnu during a severe cold period and went with Sámi reindeer keepers on their snowmobiles in biting cold as they transported trailers of animal nutrition on to the exposed Arctic plains to dispense by hand. The reindeer gathered round us, scratching the frozen ground in vain attempts for mossy morsels. This expensive and laborious procedure is having a severe influence on reindeer husbandry—and on the animals' natural survival. But the alternative is starvation. When such conditions become routine, reindeer are perishing—some from starvation, others suffocating after falling into water bodies through thinning ice sheets. On one level, the art is a monument to them. "By overlapping of materials, in a way I'm transporting the goavvi to London," says Sara.

Diverging Perspectives

This artwork also underscores the clear contrast between the industrial view of energy as a resource to be utilized for profit and survival and the Sámi philosophy of life force as an natural life force in animals, humans, and land. The gallery's past as a industrial facility is connected to this, as is what the Sámi consider green colonialism by regional governments. As they strive to be exemplars for renewable energy, Scandinavian countries have clashed with the Sámi over the building of wind energy projects, water power facilities, and digging operations on their traditional territory; the Sámi contend their human rights, livelihoods, and traditions are endangered. "It's hard being such a limited population to defend yourself when the reasons are grounded in global sustainability," Sara notes. "Extractivism has adopted the discourse of sustainability, but nonetheless it's just aiming to find more suitable ways to continue habits of expenditure."

Individual Conflicts

She and her family have personally disagreed with the state authorities over its tightening rules on herding. Previously, Sara's sibling embarked on a sequence of ultimately unsuccessful legal cases over the forced culling of his herd, supposedly to stop vegetation depletion. In support, Sara produced a extended series of pieces called Pile O'Sápmi comprising a massive curtain of numerous reindeer skulls, which was displayed at the the event Documenta 14 and later purchased by the public gallery, where it resides in the entrance.

Art as Activism

Among the community, visual expression appears the sole sphere in which they can be heard by people of other nations. In 2022, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|