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Visitors to the renowned gallery are used to unusual experiences in its vast Turbine Hall. They've relaxed under an man-made sun, descended down helter skelters, and witnessed automated jellyfish hovering through the air. Yet this marks the inaugural time they will be immersing themselves in the detailed nasal chambers of a reindeer. The latest artist commission for this cavernous space—developed by Indigenous Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—invites patrons into a labyrinthine design modeled after the enlarged interior of a reindeer's nasal airways. Inside, they can wander around or relax on skins, listening on earphones to tribal seniors sharing stories and insights.

Focus on the Nasal Passages

What's the focus on the nose? It might sound whimsical, but the exhibit pays tribute to a obscure scientific wonder: experts have found that in a fraction of a second, the reindeer's nose can raise the temperature of the incoming air it takes in by 80°C, allowing the animal to endure in extreme Arctic climates. Scaling the nose to larger than human size, Sara notes, "creates a feeling of insignificance that you as a human being are not dominant over nature." She is a ex- reporter, children's author, and land defender, who comes from a reindeer-herding family in the Norwegian Arctic. "Maybe that creates the chance to alter your outlook or evoke some humbleness," she continues.

An Homage to Traditional Ways

The labyrinthine structure is part of a elements in Sara's absorbing commission honoring the heritage, science, and beliefs of the Sámi, Europe's only Indigenous people. Semi-nomadic, the Sámi total about 100,000 people spread across the Norwegian north, the Finnish Arctic, the Swedish Lapland, and the Kola region (an territory they call Sápmi). They have faced oppression, forced assimilation, and repression of their language by all four countries. By focusing on the reindeer, an animal at the core of the Sámi belief system and creation story, the work also draws attention to the community's struggles relating to the global warming, land dispossession, and external control.

Metaphor in Materials

On the lengthy access slope, there's a looming, eighty-five-foot structure of skins trapped by electrical wires. It can be read as a metaphor for the societal frameworks restricting the Sámi. Like an electrical tower, part celestial ladder, this section of the installation, titled Goavve-, refers to the Sámi term for an severe climatic event, whereby solid layers of ice appear as changing conditions liquefy and ice over the snow, trapping the reindeers' key cold-season food, moss. This phenomenon is a outcome of planetary warming, which is happening up to four times faster in the Polar region than in other regions.

Three years ago, I met with Sara in the Norwegian far north during a icy season and went with Sámi herders on their motorized sleds in biting cold as they carried containers of animal nutrition on to the wind-scoured Arctic plains to distribute through labor. The reindeer gathered round us, digging the frozen ground in futility for lichen-covered morsels. This costly and labour-intensive procedure is having a severe influence on animal rearing—and on the animals' independence. But the choice is death. As goavvi winters become frequent, reindeer are dying—a number from lack of food, others suffocating after sinking in lakes and rivers through thinning ice sheets. On one level, the work is a tribute to them. "By overlapping of components, in a way I'm introducing the condition to London," says Sara.

Diverging Worldviews

The installation also highlights the clear difference between the modern interpretation of energy as a resource to be harnessed for profit and livelihood and the Sámi worldview of energy as an innate life force in creatures, people, and land. This venue's legacy as a fossil fuel plant is linked with this, as is what the Sámi consider green colonialism by regional governments. In their efforts to be exemplars for renewable energy, these states have clashed with the Sámi over the development of windfarms, hydroelectric dams, and extraction sites on their traditional territory; the Sámi argue their fundamental freedoms, livelihoods, and traditions are endangered. "It's hard being such a limited population to defend yourself when the justifications are grounded in global sustainability," Sara comments. "Mining practices has co-opted the language of environmentalism, but nonetheless it's just attempting to find more suitable ways to continue habits of consumption."

Family Challenges

Sara and her family have personally conflicted with the state authorities over its increasingly stringent rules on reindeer management. Previously, Sara's sibling undertook a set of unsuccessful lawsuits over the forced culling of his animals, supposedly to stop overgrazing. As a show of solidarity, Sara developed a four-year collection of creations called Pile O'Sápmi comprising a huge drape of numerous cranial remains, which was shown at the 2017's event Documenta 14 and later acquired by the National Museum of Oslo, where it hangs in the lobby.

Art as Advocacy

For numerous Indigenous people, visual expression is the sole sphere in which they can be listened to by people of other nations. Recently, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|