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Guests to the renowned gallery are accustomed to unusual experiences in its expansive Turbine Hall. They've sunbathed under an man-made sun, descended down helter skelters, and observed automated jellyfish floating through the air. Yet this marks the inaugural time they will be engaging themselves in the complex nose cavities of a reindeer. The newest artist commission for this cavernous space—developed by Indigenous Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—encourages gallerygoers into a maze-like structure based on the expanded inside of a reindeer's nose passages. Once inside, they can wander around or chill out on pelts, tuning in on earphones to Sámi elders imparting tales and knowledge.

Why the Nose?

Why the nose? It may seem whimsical, but the artwork honors a little-known 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, enabling the animal to thrive in harsh Arctic conditions. Expanding the nose to larger than human size, Sara explains, "produces a perception of inferiority that you as a human being are not superior over nature." The artist is a ex- reporter, writer for kids, and land defender, who comes from a pastoral family in northern Norway. "Perhaps that generates the chance to change your perspective or trigger some humility," she adds.

A Tribute to Traditional Ways

The winding installation is one of several components in Sara's engaging art project honoring the culture, understanding, and philosophy of the Sámi, the sole native group in Europe. Traditionally mobile, the Sámi count roughly 100,000 people spread across the Norwegian north, the Finnish Arctic, the Swedish Lapland, and the Russian Arctic (an territory they call Sápmi). They have experienced persecution, integration policies, and suppression of their language by all four countries. With an emphasis on the reindeer, an creature at the heart of the Sámi belief system and founding narrative, the installation also draws attention to the group's issues relating to the environmental emergency, land dispossession, and external control.

Metaphor in Components

At the lengthy entry slope, there's a soaring, 26-metre structure of pelts ensnared by power and light cables. It serves as a symbol for the societal frameworks limiting the Sámi. Like an electrical tower, part celestial ladder, this section of the installation, called Goavve-, points to the Sámi name for an harsh environmental condition, whereby solid layers of ice appear as varying conditions melt and refreeze the snow, trapping the reindeers' main cold-season sustenance, moss. Goavvi is a consequence of planetary warming, which is happening up to much more rapidly in the Arctic than elsewhere.

Three years ago, I visited Sara in the Norwegian far north during a icy season and joined Sámi reindeer keepers on their Arctic vehicles in freezing temperatures as they transported trailers of animal nutrition on to the barren Arctic plains to provide by hand. The reindeer crowded round us, digging the slippery ground in vain attempts for vegetative morsels. This costly and demanding method is having a significant influence on reindeer husbandry—and on the animals' independence. But the choice is starvation. When such conditions become commonplace, reindeer are dying—a number from lack of food, others suffocating after falling into lakes and rivers through prematurely melting ice. To some extent, the installation is a monument to them. "By overlapping of components, in a way I'm bringing the goavvi to London," says Sara.

Contrasting Perspectives

The installation also emphasizes the clear difference between the industrial interpretation of electricity as a asset to be harnessed for gain and livelihood and the Sámi worldview of vitality as an innate power in creatures, humans, and land. This venue's history as a coal and oil power station is linked with this, as is what the Sámi see as environmental exploitation by regional governments. While attempting to be leaders for clean sources, Nordic nations have disagreed with the Sámi over the development of windfarms, hydroelectric dams, and mines on their native soil; the Sámi assert their fundamental freedoms, ways of life, and way of life are at risk. "It's very difficult being such a small minority to stand your ground when the reasons are grounded in global sustainability," Sara observes. "Resource exploitation has co-opted the discourse of ecology, but yet it's just attempting to find alternative ways to persist in habits of consumption."

Personal Conflicts

The artist and her family have themselves disagreed with the Norwegian government over its ever-stricter rules on reindeer management. Previously, Sara's sibling embarked on a sequence of finally failed legal cases over the required reduction of his animals, ostensibly to stop overgrazing. As a show of solidarity, Sara produced a multi-year collection of creations named Pile O'Sápmi including a massive curtain of four hundred cranial remains, which was displayed at the 2017 event Documenta 14 and later obtained by the national institution, where it resides in the entrance.

The Role of Art in Awareness

For many Sámi, visual expression is the exclusive domain in which they can be listened to by people of other nations. Recently, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|