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Visitors to the renowned gallery are familiar to unexpected encounters in its expansive Turbine Hall. They have relaxed under an simulated sun, glided down spiral slides, and observed AI-powered sea creatures hovering through the air. But this marks the first time they will be immersing themselves in the detailed nose passages of a reindeer. The newest artistic project for this huge space—designed by Indigenous Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—invites patrons into a maze-like construction modeled after the expanded interior of a reindeer's nose passages. Inside, they can meander around or chill out on reindeer hides, listening on earphones to Sámi elders imparting tales and wisdom.

Focus on the Nasal Passages

Why the nose? It might seem playful, but the installation honors a obscure scientific wonder: scientists have uncovered that in a fraction of a second, the reindeer's nose can warm the incoming air it inhales by 80°C, helping the creature to survive in harsh Arctic climates. Scaling the nose to bigger than a person, Sara explains, "produces a sense of inferiority that you as a individual are not superior over nature." Sara is a ex- reporter, young adult author, and environmental activist, who hails from a herding family in northern Norway. "Possibly that fosters the potential to shift your perspective or trigger some humbleness," she adds.

An Homage to Indigenous Heritage

The winding design is one of several elements in Sara's immersive exhibition celebrating the culture, knowledge, and beliefs of the Sámi, Europe's only Indigenous people. Partially migratory, the Sámi count approximately 100,000 people spread across the Norwegian north, the Finnish Arctic, Sweden, and the Kola region (an area they call Sápmi). They've endured persecution, cultural suppression, and suppression of their dialect by all four nations. Through highlighting the reindeer, an animal at the heart of the Sámi mythology and founding narrative, the art also highlights the people's challenges connected to the global warming, property rights, and external control.

Symbolism in Materials

On the long access incline, there's a towering, eighty-five-foot formation of pelts entangled by power and light cables. It represents a metaphor for the societal frameworks limiting the Sámi. Part pylon, part spiritual ascent, this part of the exhibit, named Goavve-, refers to the Sámi name for an severe climatic event, wherein thick coatings of ice appear as changing conditions melt and solidify again the snow, locking in the reindeers' primary cold-season nourishment, moss. This phenomenon is a outcome of planetary warming, which is taking place up to at an accelerated rate in the Arctic than globally.

Previously, I met with Sara in the Norwegian far north during a icy season and went with Sámi reindeer keepers on their Arctic vehicles in biting cold as they carried trailers of supplementary feed on to the wind-scoured frozen landscape to dispense through labor. The herd crowded round us, digging the frozen ground in vain attempts for vegetative pieces. This costly and labour-intensive process is having a drastic impact on reindeer husbandry—and on the animals' natural survival. However the alternative is starvation. As these icy periods become commonplace, reindeer are succumbing—some from lack of food, others suffocating after plunging into water bodies through unstable frozen surfaces. On one level, the work is a memorial to them. "By overlapping of materials, in a way I'm transporting the condition to London," says Sara.

Opposing Belief Systems

The sculpture also underscores the sharp contrast between the industrial view of power as a asset to be harnessed for economic benefit and livelihood and the Sámi worldview of energy as an innate essence in creatures, people, and the environment. This venue's legacy as a coal and oil power station is linked with this, as is what the Sámi view as environmental exploitation by Scandinavian states. In their efforts to be exemplars for sustainable power, Scandinavian countries have disagreed with the Sámi over the development of turbine fields, water power facilities, and digging operations on their native soil; the Sámi contend their legal protections, ways of life, and culture are endangered. "It's hard being such a tiny group to protect your rights when the arguments are rooted in global sustainability," Sara observes. "Mining practices has adopted the discourse of ecology, but nonetheless it's just aiming to find better ways to persist in practices of expenditure."

Individual Struggles

The artist and her kin have personally conflicted with the state authorities over its increasingly stringent regulations on herding. A few years ago, Sara's brother embarked on a series of ultimately unsuccessful court actions over the required reduction of his animals, supposedly to stop vegetation depletion. As a show of solidarity, Sara created a four-year series of pieces named Pile O'Sápmi including a colossal drape of 400 cranial remains, which was displayed at the 2017 show Documenta 14 and later acquired by the national institution, where it hangs in the entrance.

The Role of Art in Awareness

For numerous Indigenous people, visual expression seems the only realm in which they can be heard by outsiders. In 2022, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|