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Guests to the renowned gallery are used to unusual encounters in its expansive Turbine Hall. They've sunbathed under an simulated sun, descended down amusement rides, and seen robotic sea creatures hovering through the air. However this marks the first time they will be engaging themselves in the intricate nasal cavities of a reindeer. The current creative installation for this huge space—created by Native Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—invites gallerygoers into a labyrinthine structure modeled after the scaled-up inside of a reindeer's nasal cavities. Upon entering, they can stroll around or unwind on pelts, tuning in on headphones to tribal seniors imparting narratives and insights.

Why the Nose?

Why the nose? It may appear playful, but the artwork honors a obscure natural marvel: scientists have found that in a fraction of a second, the reindeer's nose can heat the surrounding air it breathes in by 80 degrees celsius, enabling the animal to survive in harsh Arctic climates. Expanding the nose to human-scale dimensions, Sara explains, "produces a perception of smallness that you as a individual are not dominant over nature." Sara is a ex- writer, children's author, and rights advocate, who is from a reindeer-herding family in the far north of Norway. "Maybe that generates the possibility to change your outlook or spark some humbleness," she states.

A Celebration to Traditional Ways

The labyrinthine design is among various features in Sara's engaging art project honoring the traditions, understanding, and worldview of the Sámi, the continent's original inhabitants. Partially migratory, the Sámi count about 100,000 people ranged across the Norwegian north, the Finnish Arctic, Sweden, and Russia's Kola Peninsula (an region they call Sápmi). They've faced persecution, integration policies, and repression of their dialect by all four states. Through highlighting the reindeer, an creature at the heart of the Sámi belief system and origin tale, the art also draws attention to the community's issues associated with the global warming, loss of territory, and external control.

Metaphor in Elements

At the lengthy access ramp, there's a soaring, 26-metre structure of pelts ensnared by electrical wires. It serves as a analogy for the societal frameworks constraining the Sámi. Part pylon, part heavenly staircase, this section of the exhibit, titled Goavve-, points to the Sámi name for an harsh environmental condition, whereby thick sheets of ice appear as varying conditions thaw and refreeze the snow, locking in the reindeers' main cold-season food, moss. Goavvi is a result of global heating, which is happening up to at an accelerated rate in the Arctic than elsewhere.

Previously, I visited Sara in a remote town during a severe cold period and went with Sámi reindeer keepers on their motorized sleds in freezing temperatures as they carried containers of food pellets on to the exposed tundra to distribute through labor. The herd surrounded round us, pawing the icy ground in vain for lichen-covered morsels. This resource-intensive and labour-intensive procedure is having a severe effect on reindeer husbandry—and on the animals' independence. But the alternative is starvation. As these icy periods become routine, reindeer are succumbing—some from hunger, others suffocating after sinking in streams through unstable frozen surfaces. On one level, the work is a memorial to them. "Through the stacking of materials, in a way I'm bringing the phenomenon to London," says Sara.

Contrasting Perspectives

The sculpture also emphasizes the sharp difference between the western understanding of energy as a asset to be utilized for economic benefit and existence and the Sámi worldview of energy as an inherent life force in creatures, humans, and land. This venue's history as a industrial facility is connected to this, as is what the Sámi see as green colonialism by Nordic countries. While attempting to be leaders for clean sources, these states have disagreed with the Sámi over the construction of turbine fields, river barriers, and extraction sites on their native soil; the Sámi contend their fundamental freedoms, incomes, and culture are threatened. "It's challenging being such a limited population to defend yourself when the arguments are based on environmental protection," Sara notes. "Mining practices has appropriated the rhetoric of sustainability, but still it's just striving to find better ways to continue patterns of expenditure."

Personal Challenges

Sara and her family have personally conflicted with the Norwegian government over its tightening regulations on reindeer management. Previously, Sara's brother undertook a set of ultimately unsuccessful court actions over the forced culling of his animals, ostensibly to stop overgrazing. To back him, Sara produced a multi-year series of artworks called Pile O'Sápmi comprising a massive drape of numerous cranial remains, which was shown at the 2017 art exhibition Documenta 14 and later obtained by the national institution, where it hangs in the entrance.

Art as Awareness

For many Sámi, creative work seems the sole domain in which they can be listened to by outsiders. Two years ago, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|