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Visitors to the renowned gallery are used to unexpected displays in its vast Turbine Hall. They've basked under an man-made sun, descended down spiral slides, and seen robotic sea creatures hovering through the air. However this marks the initial time they will be venturing themselves in the intricate nasal cavities of a reindeer. The latest artist commission for this immense space—designed by Native Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—welcomes patrons into a maze-like design inspired by the expanded inside of a reindeer's nasal passages. Inside, they can wander around or chill out on reindeer hides, tuning in on headphones to community leaders telling stories and wisdom.

The Significance of the Nose

Why the nose? It could appear playful, but the exhibit pays tribute to a rarely recognized biological feat: scientists have found that in under a second, the reindeer's nose can heat the incoming air it breathes in by 80 degrees celsius, helping the animal to endure in inhospitable Arctic conditions. Scaling the nose to bigger than a person, Sara notes, "creates a perception of insignificance that you as a person are not in control over nature." The artist is a former writer, writer for kids, and environmental activist, who is from a reindeer-herding family in the Norwegian Arctic. "Maybe that fosters the potential to alter your perspective or trigger some humbleness," she states.

An Homage to Sámi Culture

The maze-like structure is one of several features in Sara's absorbing exhibition celebrating the heritage, knowledge, and worldview of the Sámi, the continent's original inhabitants. Traditionally mobile, the Sámi count about 100,000 people distributed across the Norwegian north, the Finnish Arctic, the Swedish Lapland, and the Kola region (an area they call Sápmi). They have experienced persecution, forced assimilation, and suppression of their dialect by all four countries. Through highlighting the reindeer, an animal at the heart of the Sámi mythology and creation story, the work also spotlights the community's challenges relating to the environmental emergency, land dispossession, and colonialism.

Metaphor in Materials

Along the extended access ramp, there's a looming, eighty-five-foot structure of reindeer hides entangled by electrical wires. It can be read as a symbol for the societal frameworks restricting the Sámi. Partly a utility pole, part heavenly staircase, this part of the exhibit, called Goavve-, refers to the Sámi name for an severe climatic event, in which dense sheets of ice develop as changing weather liquefy and refreeze the snow, encasing the reindeers' key cold-season food, fungus. Goavvi is a consequence of climate change, which is occurring up to at an accelerated rate in the Far North than in other regions.

Previously, I traveled to see Sara in the Norwegian far north during a goavvi winter and went with Sámi herders on their Arctic vehicles in biting cold as they carried containers of supplementary feed on to the barren frozen landscape to dispense through labor. These animals gathered round us, pawing the icy ground in vain for vegetative pieces. This costly and demanding procedure is having a severe influence on herding practices—and on the animals' self-sufficiency. Yet the alternative is starvation. As goavvi winters become commonplace, reindeer are perishing—some from starvation, others suffocating after plunging into streams through prematurely melting ice. On one level, the work is a monument to them. "With the layering of elements, in a way I'm introducing the goavvi to London," says Sara.

Opposing Belief Systems

This artwork also emphasizes the clear contrast between the modern understanding of electricity as a commodity to be exploited for economic benefit and survival and the Sámi philosophy of energy as an natural essence in animals, people, and the environment. The gallery's history as a coal and oil power station is tied up in this, as is what the Sámi view as eco-imperialism by Nordic countries. In their efforts to be standard bearers for sustainable power, Scandinavian countries have clashed with the Sámi over the construction of windfarms, water power facilities, and extraction sites on their traditional territory; the Sámi contend their fundamental freedoms, incomes, and culture are threatened. "It's challenging being such a small minority to defend yourself when the reasons 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 habits of use."

Personal Struggles

She and her relatives have themselves conflicted with the Norwegian government over its tightening policies on animal husbandry. Previously, Sara's sibling initiated a sequence of unsuccessful legal cases over the mandatory slaughter of his livestock, ostensibly to stop vegetation depletion. To back him, Sara created a extended set of pieces named Pile O'Sápmi featuring a colossal screen of numerous reindeer skulls, which was displayed at the the event Documenta 14 and later acquired by the public gallery, where it is displayed in the lobby.

The Role of Art in Awareness

For numerous Indigenous people, creative work seems the exclusive sphere in which they can be heard by people of other nations. Two years ago, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|