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Guests to the renowned gallery are used to unexpected experiences in its spacious Turbine Hall. They have relaxed under an simulated sun, slid down spiral slides, and seen automated sea creatures drifting through the air. However this marks the first time they will be engaging themselves in the detailed nose passages of a reindeer. The current artistic project for this huge space—created by Native Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—encourages visitors into a winding construction based on the enlarged interior of a reindeer's nose cavities. Upon entering, they can stroll around or chill out on reindeer hides, listening on headphones to Sámi elders imparting stories and knowledge.

Focus on the Nasal Passages

Why the nose? It could appear playful, but the artwork pays tribute to a little-known biological feat: experts have found that in a fraction of a second, the reindeer's nose can heat the incoming air it inhales by 80 degrees celsius, helping the creature to thrive in extreme Arctic climates. Scaling the nose to bigger than a person, Sara notes, "generates a sense of insignificance that you as a human being are not in control over nature." Sara is a former journalist, children's author, and land defender, who comes from a reindeer-herding family in the far north of Norway. "Perhaps that generates the chance to alter your perspective or spark some modesty," she states.

A Celebration to Sámi Culture

The winding design is part of a elements in Sara's absorbing exhibition honoring the traditions, knowledge, and beliefs of the Sámi, the continent's original inhabitants. Semi-nomadic, the Sámi count about 100,000 people ranged across northern Norway, Finland, the Swedish Lapland, and Russia's Kola Peninsula (an territory they call Sápmi). They've endured oppression, cultural suppression, and suppression of their tongue by all four countries. With an emphasis on the reindeer, an animal at the center of the Sámi mythology and founding narrative, the installation also draws attention to the people's struggles relating to the climate crisis, loss of territory, and imperialism.

Symbolism in Elements

At the lengthy entrance slope, there's a soaring, 26-meter formation of reindeer hides entangled by electrical wires. It can be read as a symbol for the societal frameworks limiting the Sámi. Part pylon, part heavenly staircase, this component of the installation, called Goavve-, relates to the Sámi term for an harsh environmental condition, wherein dense coatings of ice form as changing temperatures liquefy and ice over the snow, locking in the reindeers' primary winter nourishment, moss. This phenomenon is a outcome of climate change, which is happening up to much more rapidly in the Arctic than globally.

Three years ago, I visited Sara in Guovdageaidnu during a icy season and went with Sámi herders on their Arctic vehicles in freezing temperatures as they hauled containers of supplementary feed on to the wind-scoured frozen landscape to dispense by hand. The herd surrounded round us, digging the icy ground in futility for lichen-covered bits. This resource-intensive and demanding procedure is having a significant influence on animal rearing—and on the animals' natural survival. Yet the choice is death. When such conditions become routine, reindeer are perishing—some from lack of food, others submerging after sinking in lakes and rivers through thinning ice sheets. On one level, the art is a monument to them. "By overlapping of components, in a way I'm transporting the goavvi to London," says Sara.

Opposing Belief Systems

The installation also underscores the clear divergence between the industrial interpretation of electricity as a resource to be exploited for economic benefit and existence and the Sámi outlook of energy as an inherent essence in animals, humans, and nature. The gallery's legacy 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 leaders for renewable energy, these states have locked horns with the Sámi over the construction of wind energy projects, water power facilities, and extraction sites on their native soil; the Sámi assert their fundamental freedoms, ways of life, and culture are endangered. "It's challenging being such a tiny group to protect your rights when the justifications are based on environmental protection," Sara observes. "Extractivism has adopted the discourse of environmentalism, but still it's just striving to find more suitable ways to maintain patterns of use."

Individual Conflicts

She and her relatives have personally disagreed with the state authorities over its increasingly stringent rules on reindeer management. Previously, Sara's sibling embarked on a set of ultimately unsuccessful court actions over the required reduction of his herd, apparently to stop excessive feeding. In support, Sara produced a four-year set of creations called Pile O'Sápmi including a huge drape of 400 cranial remains, which was shown at the the show Documenta 14 and later acquired by the public gallery, where it is displayed in the entryway.

The Role of Art in Advocacy

For many Sámi, art is the only realm in which they can be listened to by people of other nations. Two years ago, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|