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Visitors to the renowned gallery are used to unexpected encounters in its expansive Turbine Hall. They have basked under an artificial sun, slid down helter skelters, and witnessed automated jellyfish hovering through the air. However this marks the inaugural time they will be immersing themselves in the complex nose cavities of a reindeer. The current creative installation for this immense space—designed by Indigenous Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—invites gallerygoers into a labyrinthine construction modeled after the enlarged inside of a reindeer's nasal cavities. Inside, they can wander around or unwind on pelts, listening on headphones to tribal seniors telling narratives and wisdom.

Focus on the Nasal Passages

Why choose the nasal structure? It may appear quirky, but the installation pays tribute to a rarely recognized natural marvel: scientists have discovered that in under a second, the reindeer's nose can raise the temperature of the ambient air it takes in by 80°C, allowing the creature to survive in inhospitable Arctic climates. Expanding the nose to larger than human size, Sara notes, "generates a feeling of smallness that you as a human being are not in control over nature." She is a ex- writer, writer for kids, and rights advocate, who is from a reindeer-herding family in the far north of Norway. "Perhaps that fosters the potential to shift your viewpoint or trigger some humility," she adds.

A Celebration to Indigenous Heritage

The winding design is one of several components in Sara's absorbing commission honoring the traditions, understanding, and philosophy of the Sámi, the sole native group in Europe. Partially migratory, the Sámi count about 100,000 people distributed across northern Norway, Finland, Sweden, and the Kola region (an region they call Sápmi). They have faced persecution, integration policies, and eradication of their language by all four countries. Through highlighting the reindeer, an creature at the heart of the Sámi mythology and creation story, the art also draws attention to the community's challenges relating to the global warming, land dispossession, and external control.

Metaphor in Elements

At the extended entry incline, there's a looming, 26-metre sculpture of reindeer hides trapped by electrical wires. It represents a metaphor for the societal frameworks limiting the Sámi. Part pylon, part heavenly staircase, this section of the installation, titled Goavve-, relates to the Sámi word for an extreme weather phenomenon, whereby thick sheets of ice appear as fluctuating temperatures liquefy and ice over the snow, encasing the reindeers' key cold-season food, lichen. This phenomenon is a result of climate change, which is occurring up to much more rapidly in the Polar region than elsewhere.

Previously, I visited Sara in Guovdageaidnu during a icy season and joined Sámi reindeer keepers on their snowmobiles in biting cold as they hauled carts of animal nutrition on to the barren frozen landscape to dispense by hand. These animals gathered round us, pawing the frozen ground in vain attempts for vegetative pieces. This costly and labour-intensive procedure is having a significant influence on animal rearing—and on the animals' self-sufficiency. However the alternative is death. As goavvi winters become commonplace, reindeer are perishing—some from hunger, others submerging after plunging into water bodies through unstable frozen surfaces. In a sense, the art is a monument to them. "By overlapping of elements, in a way I'm introducing the condition to London," says Sara.

Diverging Perspectives

This artwork also emphasizes the clear contrast between the industrial understanding of electricity as a commodity to be utilized for economic benefit and existence and the Sámi outlook of energy as an innate life force in animals, humans, and nature. The gallery's history as a fossil fuel plant is linked with this, as is what the Sámi see as eco-imperialism by Scandinavian states. As they strive to be exemplars for clean sources, Nordic nations have disagreed with the Sámi over the construction of windfarms, river barriers, and mines on their ancestral land; the Sámi argue their fundamental freedoms, ways of life, and culture are endangered. "It's hard being such a small minority to stand your ground when the reasons are based on saving the world," Sara observes. "Extractivism has adopted the rhetoric of sustainability, but yet it's just striving to find alternative ways to continue practices of expenditure."

Personal Struggles

She and her family have personally clashed with the Norwegian government over its tightening regulations on animal husbandry. Previously, Sara's brother initiated a sequence of finally failed court actions over the forced culling of his livestock, supposedly to stop excessive feeding. As a show of solidarity, Sara produced a multi-year collection of artworks titled Pile O'Sápmi featuring a massive drape of 400 reindeer skulls, which was displayed at the the show Documenta 14 and later obtained by the National Museum of Oslo, where it hangs in the entrance.

Art as Activism

Among the community, creative work seems the exclusive sphere in which they can be understood by outsiders. Two years ago, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|