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Attendees to the renowned gallery are familiar to surprising displays in its spacious Turbine Hall. They've sunbathed under an simulated sun, descended down spiral slides, and witnessed automated jellyfish floating through the air. Yet this marks the inaugural time they will be venturing themselves in the intricate nose chambers of a reindeer. The current artistic project for this cavernous space—created by Indigenous Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—welcomes gallerygoers into a maze-like design inspired by the scaled-up interior of a reindeer's nasal airways. Once inside, they can stroll around or relax on skins, tuning in on headphones to tribal seniors telling narratives and knowledge.

The Significance of the Nose

What's the focus on the nose? It could seem quirky, but the artwork honors a rarely recognized biological feat: experts have uncovered that in less than one second, the reindeer's nose can heat the incoming air it breathes in by 80°C, enabling the creature to survive in inhospitable Arctic climates. Expanding the nose to larger than human size, Sara says, "creates a perception of inferiority that you as a person are not dominant over nature." The artist is a former journalist, writer for kids, and environmental activist, who comes from a herding family in the far north of Norway. "Perhaps that creates the possibility to alter your perspective or trigger some humility," she states.

A Celebration to Indigenous Heritage

The winding structure is among various elements in Sara's engaging exhibition celebrating the culture, science, and worldview of the Sámi, the continent's original inhabitants. Partially migratory, the Sámi total approximately 100,000 people spread across northern Norway, Finland, Sweden, and the Russian Arctic (an region they call Sápmi). They've endured discrimination, integration policies, and suppression of their language by all four nations. Through highlighting the reindeer, an animal at the center of the Sámi belief system and creation story, the art also draws attention to the community's issues connected to the environmental emergency, property rights, and external control.

Meaning in Elements

On the extended access ramp, there's a looming, 26-metre structure of pelts trapped by electrical wires. It represents a analogy for the societal frameworks restricting the Sámi. Like an electrical tower, part heavenly staircase, this section of the exhibit, named Goavve-, points to the Sámi name for an severe climatic event, whereby thick layers of ice develop as varying conditions thaw and ice over the snow, locking in the reindeers' key cold-season food, fungus. Goavvi is a outcome of global heating, which is taking place up to at an accelerated rate in the Far North than globally.

A few years back, I visited Sara in Guovdageaidnu during a goavvi winter and joined Sámi pastoralists on their motorized sleds in chilly conditions as they carried containers of food pellets on to the barren tundra to distribute manually. The herd surrounded round us, digging the frozen ground in vain attempts for lichen-covered bits. This resource-intensive and laborious process is having a severe impact on reindeer husbandry—and on the animals' self-sufficiency. Yet the other option is malnutrition. When such conditions become commonplace, reindeer are succumbing—a number from lack of food, others drowning after plunging into streams through prematurely melting ice. To some extent, the work is a memorial to them. "With the layering of elements, in a way I'm introducing the goavvi to London," says Sara.

Opposing Worldviews

The sculpture also emphasizes the clear difference between the western view of power as a commodity to be utilized for gain and existence and the Sámi outlook of life force as an inherent life force in animals, individuals, and nature. This venue's past as a coal and oil power station is connected to this, as is what the Sámi consider eco-imperialism by Nordic countries. In their efforts to be standard bearers for renewable energy, these states have disagreed with the Sámi over the construction of windfarms, hydroelectric dams, and mines on their ancestral land; the Sámi assert their fundamental freedoms, livelihoods, and traditions are endangered. "It's challenging being such a small minority to defend yourself when the reasons are grounded in global sustainability," Sara comments. "Resource exploitation has appropriated the rhetoric of sustainability, but yet it's just aiming to find better ways to maintain practices of expenditure."

Personal Conflicts

She and her relatives have personally clashed with the Norwegian government over its ever-stricter regulations on animal husbandry. A few years ago, Sara's brother undertook a set of finally failed legal cases over the mandatory slaughter of his animals, supposedly to stop vegetation depletion. In support, Sara created a extended set of creations called Pile O'Sápmi comprising a colossal drape of four hundred cranial remains, which was displayed at the 2017 art exhibition Documenta 14 and later acquired by the public gallery, where it hangs in the lobby.

Creative Expression as Advocacy

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