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Visitors to the renowned gallery are familiar to surprising experiences in its vast Turbine Hall. They have sunbathed under an artificial sun, glided down amusement rides, and observed automated sea creatures floating through the air. Yet this marks the inaugural time they will be engaging themselves in the detailed nasal cavities of a reindeer. The newest artist commission for this cavernous space—created by Indigenous Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—invites visitors into a labyrinthine construction modeled after the expanded inside of a reindeer's nasal cavities. Once inside, they can wander around or chill out on skins, tuning in on headphones to tribal seniors sharing tales and knowledge.

Why the Nose?

Why the nose? It might seem playful, but the installation celebrates a rarely recognized scientific wonder: researchers have discovered that in under a second, the reindeer's nose can warm the incoming air it inhales by 80°C, enabling the animal to endure in extreme Arctic conditions. Enlarging the nose to bigger than a person, Sara notes, "generates a sense of smallness that you as a human being are not in control over nature." The artist is a ex- reporter, children's author, and land defender, who comes from a pastoral family in the far north of Norway. "Maybe that creates the chance to shift your perspective or evoke some humility," she adds.

A Celebration to Traditional Ways

The winding structure is among various elements in Sara's immersive art project showcasing the heritage, knowledge, and worldview of the Sámi, the continent's original inhabitants. Partially migratory, the Sámi number about 100,000 people spread across northern Norway, the Finnish Arctic, the Swedish Lapland, and the Russian Arctic (an region they call Sápmi). They have experienced oppression, forced assimilation, and suppression of their tongue by all four countries. Through highlighting the reindeer, an animal at the heart of the Sámi mythology and founding narrative, the installation also draws attention to the group's struggles associated with the environmental emergency, property rights, and external control.

Meaning in Components

Along the extended entry incline, there's a looming, 26-metre formation of pelts entangled by utility lines. It represents a analogy for the political and economic systems constraining the Sámi. Partly a utility pole, part celestial ladder, this part of the artwork, titled Goavve-, points to the Sámi word for an harsh environmental condition, whereby thick layers of ice form as varying weather melt and solidify again the snow, encasing the reindeers' key winter food, fungus. This phenomenon is a result of climate change, which is occurring up to much more rapidly in the Polar region than in other regions.

A few years back, I met with Sara in the Norwegian far north during a goavvi winter and accompanied Sámi reindeer keepers on their Arctic vehicles in biting cold as they hauled carts of supplementary feed on to the barren Arctic plains to provide by hand. The herd gathered round us, digging the frozen ground in vain attempts for mossy pieces. This resource-intensive and demanding method is having a significant impact on herding practices—and on the animals' self-sufficiency. However the choice is death. When such conditions become commonplace, reindeer are succumbing—some from lack of food, others submerging after falling into streams through thinning ice sheets. On one level, the installation is a memorial to them. "Through the stacking of components, in a way I'm introducing the phenomenon to London," says Sara.

Diverging Belief Systems

The installation also underscores the stark divergence between the modern view of electricity as a asset to be exploited for profit and survival and the Sámi worldview of vitality as an natural life force in creatures, people, and the environment. The gallery's legacy as a industrial facility is connected to this, as is what the Sámi see as green colonialism by Scandinavian states. While attempting to be exemplars for renewable energy, these states have clashed with the Sámi over the construction of windfarms, hydroelectric dams, and mines on their native soil; the Sámi argue their human rights, incomes, and culture are endangered. "It's challenging being such a tiny group to stand your ground when the reasons are rooted in saving the world," Sara observes. "Resource exploitation has adopted the discourse of environmentalism, but still it's just attempting to find more suitable ways to continue habits of consumption."

Individual Conflicts

The artist and her relatives have personally clashed with the national administration over its ever-stricter regulations on herding. In 2016, Sara's sibling initiated a set of ultimately unsuccessful court actions over the required reduction of his animals, supposedly to stop vegetation depletion. In support, Sara created a extended collection of pieces named Pile O'Sápmi featuring a huge drape of 400 cranial remains, which was exhibited at the the event Documenta 14 and later obtained by the national institution, where it is displayed in the lobby.

The Role of Art in Activism

For many Sámi, visual expression seems the sole domain in which they can be understood by people of other nations. Two years ago, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|