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Guests to the renowned gallery are accustomed to unexpected encounters in its vast Turbine Hall. They've basked under an man-made sun, glided down helter skelters, and witnessed robotic sea creatures hovering through the air. However this marks the inaugural time they will be venturing themselves in the detailed nasal passages of a reindeer. The latest artist commission for this cavernous space—created by Indigenous Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—welcomes visitors into a maze-like construction based on the enlarged interior of a reindeer's nose passages. Inside, they can stroll around or unwind on pelts, tuning in on earphones to community leaders telling stories and wisdom.

Focus on the Nasal Passages

Why the nose? It may seem quirky, but the installation pays tribute to a rarely recognized scientific wonder: researchers have discovered that in less than one second, the reindeer's nose can heat the incoming air it takes in by eighty degrees, allowing the animal to endure in harsh Arctic conditions. Expanding the nose to larger than human size, Sara says, "creates a perception of insignificance that you as a individual are not dominant over nature." Sara is a ex- reporter, writer for kids, and environmental activist, who is from a reindeer-herding family in the Norwegian Arctic. "Perhaps that fosters the chance to change your outlook or evoke some humility," she states.

An Homage to Traditional Ways

The maze-like design is one of several components in Sara's absorbing exhibition celebrating the traditions, knowledge, and philosophy of the Sámi, the sole native group in Europe. Traditionally mobile, the Sámi number approximately 100,000 people ranged across northern Norway, Finland, the Swedish Lapland, and Russia's Kola Peninsula (an region they call Sápmi). They've experienced discrimination, forced assimilation, and repression of their language by all four states. With an emphasis on the reindeer, an animal at the heart of the Sámi mythology and founding narrative, the work also highlights the group's challenges relating to the climate crisis, property rights, and colonialism.

Metaphor in Materials

Along the extended access slope, there's a looming, 26-metre structure of pelts ensnared by utility lines. It represents a analogy for the societal frameworks constraining the Sámi. Partly a utility pole, part celestial ladder, this component of the installation, titled Goavve-, relates to the Sámi name for an harsh environmental condition, whereby solid coatings of ice appear as varying temperatures liquefy and ice over the snow, encasing the reindeers' key winter food, fungus. Goavvi is a consequence of planetary warming, which is taking place up to at an accelerated rate in the Arctic than elsewhere.

Three years ago, I traveled to see Sara in Guovdageaidnu during a goavvi winter and went with Sámi reindeer keepers on their motorized sleds in freezing temperatures as they transported trailers of animal nutrition on to the barren tundra to provide through labor. These animals surrounded round us, digging the frozen ground in vain for vegetative morsels. This expensive and laborious process is having a severe influence on herding practices—and on the animals' independence. However the other option is malnutrition. As goavvi winters become frequent, reindeer are dying—a number from lack of food, others drowning after plunging into streams through unstable frozen surfaces. To some extent, the art is a tribute to them. "With the layering of materials, in a way I'm bringing the condition to London," says Sara.

Diverging Worldviews

The sculpture also underscores the clear difference between the western interpretation of energy as a asset to be utilized for gain and livelihood and the Sámi outlook of vitality as an inherent power in creatures, individuals, and nature. This venue's history as a fossil fuel plant is connected to this, as is what the Sámi see as environmental exploitation by Scandinavian states. While attempting to be standard bearers for renewable energy, Nordic nations have locked horns with the Sámi over the development of wind energy projects, river barriers, and mines on their traditional territory; the Sámi argue their fundamental freedoms, livelihoods, and culture are at risk. "It's challenging being such a tiny group to defend yourself when the reasons are grounded in environmental protection," Sara comments. "Resource exploitation has appropriated the rhetoric of ecology, but nonetheless it's just striving to find alternative ways to persist in habits of consumption."

Family Conflicts

The artist and her family have themselves conflicted with the state authorities over its increasingly stringent regulations on animal husbandry. Previously, Sara's brother undertook a sequence of unsuccessful court actions over the mandatory slaughter of his herd, supposedly to stop vegetation depletion. As a show of solidarity, Sara produced a extended collection of creations titled Pile O'Sápmi featuring a huge curtain of numerous cranial remains, which was displayed at the the event Documenta 14 and later purchased by the national institution, where it hangs in the entrance.

Art as Awareness

For many Sámi, art seems the sole realm in which they can be heard by outsiders. Recently, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|