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Guests to the renowned gallery are accustomed to unusual encounters in its spacious Turbine Hall. They have basked under an artificial sun, slid down spiral slides, and seen automated sea creatures floating through the air. Yet this marks the initial time they will be immersing themselves in the intricate nose chambers of a reindeer. The current creative installation for this immense space—designed by Native Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—encourages gallerygoers into a maze-like construction modeled after the enlarged interior of a reindeer's nasal passages. Once inside, they can meander around or relax on reindeer hides, listening on earphones to community leaders sharing stories and wisdom.

Focus on the Nasal Passages

Why choose the nasal structure? It could seem whimsical, but the installation celebrates a little-known scientific wonder: scientists have discovered that in a fraction of a second, the reindeer's nose can raise the temperature of the ambient air it takes in by 80°C, helping the creature to survive in harsh Arctic climates. Enlarging the nose to human-scale dimensions, Sara says, "generates a feeling of insignificance that you as a individual are not in control over nature." She is a ex- reporter, writer for kids, and environmental activist, who is from a reindeer-herding family in the Norwegian Arctic. "Possibly that generates the possibility to shift your perspective or spark some modesty," she adds.

An Homage to Indigenous Heritage

The maze-like installation is one of several elements in Sara's immersive commission celebrating the traditions, knowledge, and worldview of the Sámi, the continent's original inhabitants. Traditionally mobile, the Sámi total roughly 100,000 people ranged across northern Norway, Finland, Sweden, and the Russian Arctic (an area they call Sápmi). They have experienced discrimination, integration policies, and suppression of their language by all four countries. With an emphasis on the reindeer, an animal at the core of the Sámi mythology and origin tale, the work also highlights the community's struggles associated with the climate crisis, property rights, and external control.

Metaphor in Materials

At the extended access incline, there's a soaring, 26-metre sculpture of pelts trapped by electrical wires. It serves as a metaphor for the societal frameworks constraining the Sámi. Like an electrical tower, part heavenly staircase, this part of the artwork, called Goavve-, relates to the Sámi word for an severe climatic event, whereby thick coatings of ice develop as fluctuating conditions melt and ice over the snow, locking in the reindeers' main winter food, fungus. This phenomenon is a outcome of global heating, which is occurring up to much more rapidly in the Arctic than globally.

A few years back, I visited Sara in the Norwegian far north during a severe cold period and joined Sámi herders on their Arctic vehicles in biting cold as they hauled containers of animal nutrition on to the barren frozen landscape to dispense by hand. These animals gathered round us, pawing the icy ground in vain attempts for vegetative morsels. This resource-intensive and laborious procedure is having a significant effect on herding practices—and on the animals' natural survival. But the other option is starvation. When such conditions become routine, reindeer are perishing—a number from starvation, others submerging after plunging into water bodies through prematurely melting ice. In a sense, the art is a tribute to them. "With the layering of materials, in a way I'm bringing the goavvi to London," says Sara.

Diverging Perspectives

The installation also underscores the sharp divergence between the western view of energy as a commodity to be harnessed for economic benefit and livelihood and the Sámi philosophy of vitality as an innate essence in creatures, people, and the environment. The gallery's legacy as a industrial facility is tied up in this, as is what the Sámi view as green colonialism by Nordic countries. In their efforts to be exemplars for clean sources, Scandinavian countries have disagreed with the Sámi over the construction of turbine fields, hydroelectric dams, and digging operations on their native soil; the Sámi argue their legal protections, ways of life, and traditions are endangered. "It's very difficult being such a limited population to defend yourself when the arguments are based on environmental protection," Sara notes. "Mining practices has co-opted the language of ecology, but nonetheless it's just striving to find more suitable ways to continue patterns of consumption."

Family Challenges

She and her family have themselves clashed with the state authorities over its ever-stricter policies on herding. Previously, Sara's brother initiated a series of unsuccessful legal cases over the mandatory slaughter of his livestock, apparently to stop excessive feeding. To back him, Sara created a extended series of pieces called Pile O'Sápmi including a massive drape of four hundred cranial remains, which was exhibited at the 2017's event Documenta 14 and later acquired by the public gallery, where it hangs in the entrance.

Creative Expression as Activism

For many Sámi, creative work is the sole realm in which they can be heard by people of other nations. Two years ago, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|