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Attendees to the renowned gallery are used to unexpected experiences in its spacious Turbine Hall. They've relaxed under an artificial sun, slid down spiral slides, and seen robotic jellyfish floating through the air. But this marks the initial time they will be engaging themselves in the complex nose passages of a reindeer. The latest artist commission for this cavernous space—developed by Native Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—encourages gallerygoers into a winding construction inspired by the expanded inside of a reindeer's nose passages. Once inside, they can stroll around or chill out on skins, listening on earphones to Sámi elders imparting narratives and knowledge.

Focus on the Nasal Passages

Why choose the nasal structure? It might seem playful, but the artwork pays tribute to a rarely recognized scientific wonder: scientists have uncovered that in under a second, the reindeer's nose can raise the temperature of the surrounding air it inhales by 80°C, helping the creature to survive in inhospitable Arctic conditions. Expanding the nose to larger than human size, Sara explains, "creates a sense of insignificance that you as a person are not in control over nature." The artist is a former reporter, young adult author, and land defender, who comes from a reindeer-herding family in northern Norway. "Perhaps that fosters the possibility to change your viewpoint or spark some modesty," she continues.

A Celebration to Traditional Ways

The maze-like design is one of several components in Sara's engaging commission honoring the heritage, science, and philosophy of the Sámi, the sole native group in Europe. Semi-nomadic, the Sámi total about 100,000 people ranged across northern Norway, the Finnish Arctic, the Swedish Lapland, and the Kola region (an region they call Sápmi). They've experienced discrimination, cultural suppression, and repression of their language by all four nations. By focusing on the reindeer, an animal at the core of the Sámi mythology and origin tale, the art also highlights the group's struggles associated with the environmental emergency, land dispossession, and external control.

Meaning in Elements

Along the lengthy entry slope, there's a soaring, 26-metre sculpture of reindeer hides trapped by power and light cables. It represents a metaphor for the political and economic systems limiting the Sámi. Part pylon, part spiritual ascent, this component of the installation, titled Goavve-, relates to the Sámi name for an extreme weather phenomenon, whereby dense sheets of ice appear as changing conditions liquefy and ice over the snow, trapping the reindeers' main winter food, moss. Goavvi is a outcome of global heating, which is occurring up to at an accelerated rate in the Arctic than in other regions.

Previously, I visited Sara in the Norwegian far north during a severe cold period and joined Sámi reindeer keepers on their motorized sleds in biting cold as they transported containers of animal nutrition on to the wind-scoured Arctic plains to provide manually. The reindeer crowded round us, digging the frozen ground in futility for lichen-covered pieces. This costly and laborious method is having a significant impact on reindeer husbandry—and on the animals' self-sufficiency. However the choice is death. As these icy periods become frequent, reindeer are succumbing—a number from hunger, others submerging after plunging into streams through prematurely melting ice. On one level, the art is a monument to them. "Through the stacking of materials, in a way I'm introducing the condition to London," says Sara.

Opposing Worldviews

The sculpture also emphasizes the clear divergence between the industrial view of electricity as a asset to be harnessed for profit and livelihood and the Sámi philosophy of vitality as an natural essence in creatures, people, and the environment. The gallery's legacy as a industrial facility is connected to this, as is what the Sámi see as eco-imperialism by Scandinavian states. While attempting to be exemplars for clean sources, these states have clashed with the Sámi over the building of turbine fields, water power facilities, and mines on their ancestral land; the Sámi argue their legal protections, incomes, and culture are endangered. "It's challenging being such a small minority to protect your rights when the justifications are grounded in environmental protection," Sara observes. "Extractivism has adopted the rhetoric of environmentalism, but yet it's just striving to find alternative ways to persist in habits of expenditure."

Individual Conflicts

Sara and her relatives have themselves disagreed with the state authorities over its tightening regulations on herding. Previously, Sara's brother initiated a series of unsuccessful court actions over the forced culling of his herd, supposedly to stop vegetation depletion. To back him, Sara created a extended collection of creations called Pile O'Sápmi including a massive curtain of four hundred animal bones, which was displayed at the 2017 event Documenta 14 and later obtained by the public gallery, where it hangs in the lobby.

Creative Expression as Activism

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