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Visitors to the renowned gallery are accustomed to unusual encounters in its spacious Turbine Hall. They've sunbathed under an simulated sun, slid down spiral slides, and witnessed robotic sea creatures floating through the air. Yet this marks the first time they will be venturing themselves in the intricate nasal cavities of a reindeer. The current creative installation for this cavernous space—created by Indigenous Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—invites visitors into a labyrinthine construction inspired by the enlarged inside of a reindeer's nose passages. Upon entering, they can stroll around or unwind on pelts, listening on headphones to community leaders telling tales and knowledge.

The Significance of the Nose

Why choose the nasal structure? It could appear playful, but the exhibit pays tribute to a rarely recognized biological feat: scientists have uncovered that in less than one second, the reindeer's nose can heat the surrounding air it takes in by 80°C, helping the creature to survive in extreme Arctic temperatures. Enlarging the nose to human-scale dimensions, Sara says, "generates a perception of inferiority that you as a human being are not superior over nature." Sara is a former reporter, children's author, and rights advocate, who hails from a reindeer-herding family in the Norwegian Arctic. "Possibly that generates the chance to alter your perspective or spark some modesty," she adds.

An Homage to Indigenous Heritage

The maze-like structure is one of several features in Sara's immersive art project celebrating the traditions, understanding, and philosophy of the Sámi, the continent's original inhabitants. Traditionally mobile, the Sámi count approximately 100,000 people ranged across the Norwegian north, the Finnish Arctic, Sweden, and the Russian Arctic (an territory they call Sápmi). They have faced discrimination, cultural suppression, and eradication of their dialect by all four states. Through highlighting the reindeer, an animal at the center of the Sámi mythology and founding narrative, the work also highlights the group's struggles connected to the global warming, property rights, and external control.

Symbolism in Materials

Along the lengthy entrance ramp, there's a towering, eighty-five-foot formation of reindeer hides entangled by utility lines. It serves as a metaphor for the societal frameworks constraining the Sámi. Like an electrical tower, part celestial ladder, this section of the installation, named Goavve-, relates to the Sámi name for an severe climatic event, wherein dense sheets of ice form as varying temperatures thaw and refreeze the snow, locking in the reindeers' primary winter food, lichen. The condition is a outcome of global heating, which is occurring up to at an accelerated rate in the Polar region than in other regions.

Previously, I met with Sara in the Norwegian far north during a icy season and went with Sámi reindeer keepers on their motorized sleds in freezing temperatures as they carried trailers of supplementary feed on to the exposed frozen landscape to distribute by hand. The herd surrounded round us, digging the slippery ground in futility for vegetative bits. This costly and laborious process is having a significant effect on reindeer husbandry—and on the animals' self-sufficiency. However the choice is starvation. As these icy periods become commonplace, reindeer are succumbing—a number from lack of food, others submerging after sinking in lakes and rivers through unstable frozen surfaces. In a sense, the art is a monument to them. "With the layering of materials, in a way I'm bringing the condition to London," says Sara.

Diverging Belief Systems

The installation also underscores the clear contrast between the industrial view of electricity as a commodity to be utilized for profit and existence and the Sámi philosophy of life force as an inherent essence in animals, people, and nature. This venue's legacy as a coal and oil power station is connected to this, as is what the Sámi see as environmental exploitation by Scandinavian states. While attempting to be standard bearers for sustainable power, Nordic nations have clashed with the Sámi over the construction of wind energy projects, hydroelectric dams, and mines on their native soil; the Sámi contend their fundamental freedoms, ways of life, and way of life are endangered. "It's hard being such a tiny group to stand your ground when the reasons are grounded in environmental protection," Sara notes. "Resource exploitation has co-opted the rhetoric of ecology, but yet it's just striving to find better ways to maintain patterns of expenditure."

Individual Conflicts

Sara and her family have themselves disagreed with the Norwegian government over its ever-stricter rules on herding. In 2016, Sara's sibling undertook a series of unsuccessful legal cases over the mandatory slaughter of his livestock, supposedly to stop vegetation depletion. As a show of solidarity, Sara developed a multi-year set of creations named Pile O'Sápmi including a huge drape of four hundred cranial remains, which was exhibited at the 2017's art exhibition Documenta 14 and later obtained by the public gallery, where it is displayed in the lobby.

Creative Expression as Awareness

For numerous Indigenous people, art seems the sole realm in which they can be listened to by outsiders. Two years ago, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|