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Visitors to the renowned gallery are used to unusual displays in its expansive Turbine Hall. They have basked under an artificial sun, glided down helter skelters, and observed automated sea creatures hovering through the air. But this marks the initial time they will be engaging themselves in the complex nasal passages of a reindeer. The newest artist commission for this huge space—developed by Native Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—invites patrons into a labyrinthine construction inspired by the scaled-up inside of a reindeer's nasal airways. Upon entering, they can stroll around or relax on pelts, listening on headphones to tribal seniors imparting tales and wisdom.

Focus on the Nasal Passages

Why choose the nasal structure? It may seem quirky, but the artwork honors a little-known scientific wonder: scientists have found that in less than one second, the reindeer's nose can warm the ambient air it takes in by 80°C, enabling the animal to endure in inhospitable Arctic temperatures. Enlarging the nose to human-scale dimensions, Sara says, "produces a perception of smallness that you as a human being are not dominant over nature." She is a former journalist, children's author, and environmental activist, who comes from a pastoral family in the far north of Norway. "Possibly that creates the chance to change your outlook or trigger some humbleness," she adds.

A Celebration to Indigenous Heritage

The winding structure is among various features in Sara's absorbing art project honoring the culture, knowledge, and philosophy of the Sámi, the sole native group in Europe. Semi-nomadic, the Sámi number about 100,000 people distributed across the Norwegian north, Finland, Sweden, and Russia's Kola Peninsula (an area they call Sápmi). They've experienced oppression, integration policies, and repression of their language by all four nations. Through highlighting the reindeer, an animal at the heart of the Sámi mythology and origin tale, the art also spotlights the community's struggles connected to the global warming, land dispossession, and colonialism.

Symbolism in Elements

At the long access incline, there's a soaring, eighty-five-foot sculpture of reindeer hides entangled by utility lines. It can be read as a analogy for the governance and financial structures constraining the Sámi. Part pylon, part spiritual ascent, this component of the installation, called Goavve-, relates to the Sámi term for an severe climatic event, whereby solid sheets of ice develop as fluctuating conditions liquefy and ice over the snow, trapping the reindeers' key cold-season nourishment, fungus. Goavvi is a result of global heating, which is occurring up to four times faster in the Far North than in other regions.

A few years back, I met with Sara in the Norwegian far north during a goavvi winter and joined Sámi herders on their Arctic vehicles in freezing temperatures as they transported trailers of animal nutrition on to the barren Arctic plains to distribute through labor. These animals crowded round us, scratching the slippery ground in vain attempts for mossy pieces. This expensive and laborious process is having a severe impact on herding practices—and on the animals' natural survival. But the other option is starvation. As these icy periods become routine, reindeer are dying—some from hunger, others drowning after sinking in lakes and rivers through unstable frozen surfaces. To some extent, the installation is a memorial to them. "With the layering of elements, in a way I'm transporting the phenomenon to London," says Sara.

Contrasting Belief Systems

This artwork also underscores the clear difference between the western view of energy as a resource to be harnessed for gain and survival and the Sámi outlook of energy as an inherent essence in animals, individuals, and the environment. This venue's history as a coal and oil power station is linked with this, as is what the Sámi see as green colonialism by Nordic countries. As they strive to be exemplars for clean sources, Scandinavian countries have clashed with the Sámi over the building of turbine fields, water power facilities, and digging operations on their ancestral land; the Sámi contend their legal protections, livelihoods, and way of life are at risk. "It's challenging being such a tiny group to defend yourself when the arguments are grounded in saving the world," Sara notes. "Mining practices has appropriated the discourse of ecology, but still it's just attempting to find more suitable ways to persist in practices of use."

Individual Struggles

She and her family have personally clashed with the national administration over its increasingly stringent regulations on herding. In 2016, Sara's brother embarked on a set of unsuccessful lawsuits over the forced culling of his livestock, ostensibly to stop overgrazing. To back him, Sara created a four-year set of artworks named Pile O'Sápmi including a massive curtain of 400 animal bones, which was shown at the 2017 event Documenta 14 and later obtained by the public gallery, where it resides in the entryway.

The Role of Art in Activism

For numerous Indigenous people, art is the only sphere in which they can be heard by outsiders. Two years ago, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|