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Guests to the renowned gallery are accustomed to unexpected experiences in its expansive Turbine Hall. They've basked under an simulated sun, descended down spiral slides, and observed robotic sea creatures floating through the air. Yet this marks the first time they will be engaging themselves in the complex nasal cavities of a reindeer. The current creative installation for this immense space—designed by Native Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—invites gallerygoers into a labyrinthine structure modeled after the enlarged inside of a reindeer's nasal cavities. Inside, they can wander around or relax on reindeer hides, listening on earphones to Sámi elders imparting stories and wisdom.

The Significance of the Nose

What's the focus on the nose? It could appear whimsical, but the artwork honors a rarely recognized natural marvel: researchers have uncovered that in under a second, the reindeer's nose can warm the ambient air it breathes in by 80°C, allowing the creature to endure in extreme Arctic conditions. Enlarging the nose to human-scale dimensions, Sara says, "generates a sense of inferiority that you as a human being are not superior over nature." Sara is a former reporter, young adult author, and rights advocate, who comes from a pastoral family in the far north of Norway. "Perhaps that generates the potential to change your perspective or trigger some humility," she states.

An Homage to Indigenous Heritage

The maze-like design is among various elements in Sara's immersive art project showcasing the heritage, science, and beliefs of the Sámi, the sole native group in Europe. Partially migratory, the Sámi count roughly 100,000 people spread across the Norwegian north, Finland, the Swedish Lapland, and the Russian Arctic (an area they call Sápmi). They've endured discrimination, integration policies, and eradication of their dialect by all four states. Through highlighting the reindeer, an creature at the heart of the Sámi cosmology and founding narrative, the art also highlights the people's issues relating to the environmental emergency, land dispossession, and colonialism.

Symbolism in Materials

On the extended entry slope, there's a looming, 26-meter structure of reindeer hides ensnared by power and light cables. It represents a symbol for the governance and financial structures limiting the Sámi. Like an electrical tower, part spiritual ascent, this part of the installation, named Goavve-, points to the Sámi term for an harsh environmental condition, wherein thick layers of ice develop as varying weather thaw and solidify again the snow, locking in the reindeers' primary cold-season sustenance, moss. This phenomenon is a result of climate change, which is occurring up to much more rapidly in the Arctic than elsewhere.

Three years ago, I traveled to see Sara in the Norwegian far north during a icy season and joined Sámi herders on their motorized sleds in chilly conditions as they transported carts of food pellets on to the exposed frozen landscape to provide manually. The herd crowded round us, scratching the slippery ground in vain for lichen-covered pieces. This resource-intensive and labour-intensive method is having a drastic impact on reindeer husbandry—and on the animals' natural survival. Yet the alternative is death. When such conditions become commonplace, reindeer are dying—some from hunger, others suffocating after falling into water bodies through prematurely melting ice. In a sense, the work is a monument to them. "Through the stacking of elements, in a way I'm introducing the phenomenon to London," says Sara.

Contrasting Worldviews

The installation also highlights the stark divergence between the industrial understanding of power as a commodity to be harnessed for economic benefit and existence and the Sámi philosophy of life force as an natural essence in creatures, people, and nature. The gallery's history as a coal and oil power station is connected to this, as is what the Sámi consider green colonialism by regional governments. As they strive to be standard bearers for sustainable power, Nordic nations have disagreed with the Sámi over the development of windfarms, hydroelectric dams, and extraction sites on their traditional territory; the Sámi assert their legal protections, incomes, and traditions are at risk. "It's very difficult being such a limited population to protect your rights when the reasons are based on environmental protection," Sara comments. "Mining practices has adopted the language of sustainability, but nonetheless it's just attempting to find alternative ways to maintain patterns of expenditure."

Personal Challenges

She and her relatives have personally disagreed with the state authorities over its tightening regulations on herding. In 2016, Sara's brother undertook a set of unsuccessful legal cases over the mandatory slaughter of his livestock, ostensibly to stop overgrazing. As a show of solidarity, Sara created a multi-year series of creations called Pile O'Sápmi including a huge screen of four hundred reindeer skulls, which was shown at the 2017 event Documenta 14 and later purchased by the public gallery, where it is displayed in the entryway.

Creative Expression as Awareness

Among the community, creative work is the sole domain in which they can be heard by the global community. Two years ago, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|