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Guests to the renowned gallery are accustomed to unexpected encounters in its spacious Turbine Hall. They've relaxed under an simulated sun, descended down helter skelters, and observed AI-powered jellyfish hovering through the air. Yet this marks the inaugural time they will be immersing themselves in the complex nasal passages of a reindeer. The newest creative installation for this huge space—developed by Indigenous Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—invites visitors into a labyrinthine design based on the expanded inside of a reindeer's nasal passages. Upon entering, they can wander around or relax on reindeer hides, listening on earphones to tribal seniors sharing narratives and knowledge.

The Significance of the Nose

Why the nose? It may sound playful, but the exhibit honors a little-known scientific wonder: researchers have found that in less than one second, the reindeer's nose can warm the incoming air it takes in by 80°C, helping the animal to survive in extreme Arctic temperatures. Expanding the nose to bigger than a person, Sara explains, "produces a sense of smallness that you as a individual are not superior over nature." Sara is a former reporter, young adult author, and environmental activist, who is from a reindeer-herding family in northern Norway. "Perhaps that generates the chance to change your perspective or spark some humility," she adds.

An Homage to Indigenous Heritage

The maze-like installation is among various components in Sara's engaging exhibition showcasing the traditions, knowledge, and beliefs of the Sámi, the continent's original inhabitants. Traditionally mobile, the Sámi count roughly 100,000 people distributed across northern Norway, the Finnish Arctic, Sweden, and the Russian Arctic (an area they call Sápmi). They have endured discrimination, cultural suppression, and repression of their dialect by all four states. By focusing on the reindeer, an creature at the center of the Sámi belief system and founding narrative, the installation also highlights the community's issues relating to the global warming, property rights, and imperialism.

Symbolism in Elements

On the extended access slope, there's a towering, eighty-five-foot formation of pelts ensnared by utility lines. It serves as a symbol for the societal frameworks restricting the Sámi. Partly a utility pole, part celestial ladder, this part of the installation, called Goavve-, points to the Sámi word for an severe climatic event, in which solid sheets of ice appear as changing temperatures thaw and ice over the snow, trapping the reindeers' main cold-season sustenance, fungus. This phenomenon is a result of planetary warming, which is happening up to much more rapidly in the Polar region than elsewhere.

Three years ago, I traveled to see Sara in a remote town during a icy season and joined Sámi herders on their Arctic vehicles in freezing temperatures as they carried containers of animal nutrition on to the exposed tundra to distribute by hand. These animals gathered round us, digging the icy ground in vain for lichen-covered morsels. This resource-intensive and labour-intensive process is having a significant effect on reindeer husbandry—and on the animals' natural survival. However the choice is malnutrition. When such conditions become commonplace, reindeer are dying—some from hunger, others submerging after sinking in lakes and rivers through unstable frozen surfaces. On one level, the art is a memorial to them. "By overlapping of components, in a way I'm transporting the condition to London," says Sara.

Opposing Belief Systems

This artwork also highlights the clear difference between the western understanding of energy as a resource to be harnessed for economic benefit and livelihood and the Sámi outlook of vitality as an natural essence in animals, people, and the environment. The gallery's history as a fossil fuel plant is connected to this, as is what the Sámi consider eco-imperialism by Nordic countries. As they strive to be standard bearers for clean sources, Scandinavian countries have locked horns with the Sámi over the construction of wind energy projects, river barriers, and digging operations on their ancestral land; the Sámi contend their human rights, incomes, and way of life are endangered. "It's hard being such a limited population to defend yourself when the arguments are based on environmental protection," Sara notes. "Resource exploitation has appropriated the discourse of environmentalism, but yet it's just aiming to find alternative ways to continue patterns of use."

Individual Struggles

Sara and her kin have personally disagreed with the Norwegian government over its tightening regulations on herding. A few years ago, Sara's sibling embarked on a series of ultimately unsuccessful legal cases over the required reduction of his animals, ostensibly to stop vegetation depletion. In support, Sara developed a multi-year series of pieces titled Pile O'Sápmi including a massive drape of numerous cranial remains, which was exhibited at the the event Documenta 14 and later obtained by the public gallery, where it resides in the entrance.

Creative Expression as Advocacy

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