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Guests to the renowned gallery are accustomed to unexpected encounters in its vast Turbine Hall. They have relaxed under an artificial sun, glided down amusement rides, and witnessed robotic sea creatures floating through the air. However this marks the inaugural time they will be engaging themselves in the intricate nose cavities of a reindeer. The latest artist commission for this immense space—designed by Native Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—invites patrons into a labyrinthine construction based on the expanded inside of a reindeer's nose passages. Once inside, they can stroll around or chill out on skins, tuning in on headphones to tribal seniors telling tales and knowledge.

Why the Nose?

What's the focus on the nose? It might sound whimsical, but the artwork honors a rarely recognized natural marvel: experts have found that in under a second, the reindeer's nose can warm the incoming air it inhales by 80°C, helping the creature to survive in extreme Arctic temperatures. Enlarging the nose to larger than human size, Sara notes, "produces a sense of inferiority that you as a individual are not superior over nature." She is a ex- reporter, writer for kids, and land defender, who comes from a reindeer-herding family in the far north of Norway. "Maybe that generates the possibility to alter your perspective or evoke some humbleness," she states.

An Homage to Traditional Ways

The maze-like structure is among various elements in Sara's immersive art project showcasing the traditions, science, and beliefs of the Sámi, the sole native group in Europe. Semi-nomadic, the Sámi total about 100,000 people spread across northern Norway, Finland, the Swedish Lapland, and the Russian Arctic (an territory they call Sápmi). They've experienced discrimination, cultural suppression, and suppression of their tongue by all four countries. With an emphasis on the reindeer, an animal at the core of the Sámi cosmology and creation story, the art also draws attention to the community's issues connected to the global warming, property rights, and colonialism.

Meaning in Components

Along the long access ramp, there's a soaring, 26-metre structure of pelts trapped by power and light cables. It can be read as a symbol for the political and economic systems restricting the Sámi. Partly a utility pole, part heavenly staircase, this component of the artwork, called Goavve-, refers to the Sámi name for an harsh environmental condition, whereby dense sheets of ice develop as varying temperatures liquefy and solidify again the snow, trapping the reindeers' main winter nourishment, lichen. This phenomenon is a outcome of global heating, which is happening up to at an accelerated rate in the Far North than in other regions.

Three years ago, I traveled to see Sara in a remote town during a goavvi winter and joined Sámi reindeer keepers on their snowmobiles in biting cold as they carried trailers of supplementary feed on to the barren frozen landscape to dispense by hand. These animals gathered round us, scratching the slippery ground in futility for mossy pieces. This resource-intensive and laborious method is having a significant effect on reindeer husbandry—and on the animals' natural survival. But the choice is starvation. As goavvi winters become commonplace, reindeer are dying—a number from lack of food, others submerging after falling into streams through prematurely melting ice. To some extent, the art is a monument to them. "With the layering of components, in a way I'm bringing the goavvi to London," says Sara.

Contrasting Perspectives

This artwork also highlights the stark divergence between the industrial understanding of power as a commodity to be harnessed for gain and existence and the Sámi outlook of life force as an natural essence in animals, humans, and the environment. The gallery's past as a industrial facility is tied up in this, as is what the Sámi view as green colonialism by regional governments. As they strive to be leaders for clean sources, Nordic nations have locked horns with the Sámi over the construction of windfarms, hydroelectric dams, and mines on their ancestral land; the Sámi contend their fundamental freedoms, ways of life, and traditions are at risk. "It's challenging being such a tiny group to stand your ground when the arguments are based on global sustainability," Sara notes. "Extractivism has co-opted the rhetoric of sustainability, but yet it's just attempting to find more suitable ways to maintain patterns of consumption."

Individual Challenges

She and her kin have themselves disagreed with the state authorities over its increasingly stringent rules on reindeer management. Previously, Sara's sibling initiated a sequence of ultimately unsuccessful legal cases over the forced culling of his animals, supposedly to stop excessive feeding. As a show of solidarity, Sara developed a extended collection of artworks titled Pile O'Sápmi including a massive drape of numerous animal bones, which was displayed at the 2017 art exhibition Documenta 14 and later obtained by the public gallery, where it hangs in the entryway.

Art as Advocacy

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