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Visitors to the renowned gallery are used to unexpected experiences in its vast Turbine Hall. They have sunbathed under an artificial sun, slid down helter skelters, and seen robotic sea creatures floating through the air. However this marks the first time they will be immersing themselves in the intricate nose chambers of a reindeer. The latest creative installation for this cavernous space—designed by Native Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—encourages gallerygoers into a winding structure inspired by the expanded interior of a reindeer's nose passages. Once inside, they can wander around or chill out on skins, tuning in on earphones to community leaders sharing tales and knowledge.

Focus on the Nasal Passages

Why the nose? It could appear playful, but the artwork celebrates a rarely recognized biological feat: researchers have discovered that in a fraction of a second, the reindeer's nose can heat the incoming air it breathes in by eighty degrees, enabling the creature to endure in extreme Arctic temperatures. Scaling the nose to human-scale dimensions, Sara notes, "creates a sense of insignificance that you as a individual are not in control over nature." Sara is a former writer, children's author, and environmental activist, who comes from a pastoral family in the Norwegian Arctic. "Possibly that generates the potential to shift your outlook or evoke some humbleness," she continues.

An Homage to Indigenous Heritage

The labyrinthine installation is one of several components in Sara's immersive art project showcasing the heritage, understanding, and beliefs of the Sámi, the sole native group in Europe. Traditionally mobile, the Sámi total approximately 100,000 people spread across northern Norway, the Finnish Arctic, the Swedish Lapland, and the Russian Arctic (an area they call Sápmi). They've endured persecution, integration policies, and repression of their tongue by all four nations. With an emphasis on the reindeer, an creature at the heart of the Sámi belief system and origin tale, the work also spotlights the community's struggles relating to the global warming, land dispossession, and colonialism.

Meaning in Components

Along the lengthy entry slope, there's a soaring, eighty-five-foot formation of reindeer hides entangled by electrical wires. It serves as a symbol for the political and economic systems constraining the Sámi. Like an electrical tower, part heavenly staircase, this component of the installation, named Goavve-, refers to the Sámi term for an extreme weather phenomenon, whereby thick coatings of ice form as varying temperatures liquefy and solidify again the snow, encasing the reindeers' key cold-season nourishment, moss. This phenomenon is a result of global heating, which is taking place up to four times faster in the Far North than elsewhere.

Previously, I visited Sara in Guovdageaidnu during a icy season and joined Sámi herders on their snowmobiles in biting cold as they carried trailers of animal nutrition on to the barren frozen landscape to dispense through labor. These animals surrounded round us, digging the slippery ground in vain attempts for mossy bits. This resource-intensive and labour-intensive procedure is having a significant effect on reindeer husbandry—and on the animals' independence. However the alternative is death. As goavvi winters become frequent, reindeer are perishing—a number from hunger, others drowning after sinking in water bodies through unstable frozen surfaces. In a sense, the art is a memorial to them. "Through the stacking of components, in a way I'm transporting the condition to London," says Sara.

Diverging Worldviews

The installation also underscores the sharp divergence between the western interpretation of energy as a asset to be exploited for economic benefit and livelihood and the Sámi worldview of vitality as an inherent essence in animals, people, and land. The gallery's history as a coal and oil power station is tied up in this, as is what the Sámi see as green colonialism by regional governments. As they strive to be standard bearers for clean sources, these states have disagreed with the Sámi over the construction of wind energy projects, river barriers, and digging operations on their traditional territory; the Sámi assert their human rights, incomes, and traditions are at risk. "It's hard being such a tiny group to protect your rights when the justifications are grounded in global sustainability," Sara comments. "Mining practices has appropriated the discourse of ecology, but nonetheless it's just attempting to find better ways to continue patterns of consumption."

Personal Conflicts

She and her relatives have themselves disagreed with the national administration over its tightening regulations on herding. In 2016, Sara's brother embarked on a set of finally failed lawsuits over the required reduction of his livestock, supposedly to stop vegetation depletion. In support, Sara created a multi-year collection of artworks called Pile O'Sápmi featuring a colossal screen of four hundred cranial remains, which was displayed at the 2017's show Documenta 14 and later obtained by the public gallery, where it is displayed in the entrance.

Art as Activism

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