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Guests to the renowned gallery are familiar to unexpected experiences in its spacious Turbine Hall. They have relaxed under an artificial sun, descended down helter skelters, and seen robotic jellyfish hovering through the air. But this marks the first time they will be engaging themselves in the complex nose cavities of a reindeer. The latest artist commission for this immense space—designed by Native Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—invites patrons into a labyrinthine structure modeled after the enlarged inside of a reindeer's nose cavities. Upon entering, they can wander around or chill out on pelts, listening on headphones to tribal seniors telling narratives and insights.

The Significance of the Nose

Why the nose? It may seem whimsical, but the exhibit pays tribute to a obscure scientific wonder: experts have found that in less than one second, the reindeer's nose can warm the incoming air it inhales by 80°C, allowing the creature to survive in extreme Arctic climates. Enlarging the nose to bigger than a person, Sara explains, "creates a sense of smallness that you as a individual are not superior over nature." Sara is a ex- writer, children's author, and environmental activist, who comes from a reindeer-herding family in northern Norway. "Perhaps that fosters the chance to alter your viewpoint or trigger some humbleness," she adds.

A Celebration to Indigenous Heritage

The labyrinthine structure is among various components in Sara's immersive art project showcasing the heritage, science, and worldview of the Sámi, Europe's only Indigenous people. Partially migratory, the Sámi count about 100,000 people distributed across the Norwegian north, Finland, Sweden, and Russia's Kola Peninsula (an territory they call Sápmi). They have faced oppression, integration policies, and repression of their dialect by all four nations. By focusing on the reindeer, an animal at the center of the Sámi belief system and origin tale, the installation also draws attention to the community's challenges relating to the global warming, property rights, and imperialism.

Symbolism in Components

At the long access incline, there's a towering, 26-metre formation of pelts trapped by electrical wires. It serves as a symbol for the political and economic systems limiting the Sámi. Like an electrical tower, part celestial ladder, this component of the artwork, titled Goavve-, points to the Sámi name for an severe climatic event, whereby thick sheets of ice develop as changing weather liquefy and ice over the snow, encasing the reindeers' main cold-season sustenance, fungus. This phenomenon is a result of planetary warming, which is happening up to at an accelerated rate in the Arctic than globally.

Three years ago, I met with Sara in the Norwegian far north during a severe cold period and joined Sámi reindeer keepers on their Arctic vehicles in biting cold as they carried containers of animal nutrition on to the barren tundra to dispense by hand. The reindeer gathered round us, digging the slippery ground in vain for lichen-covered morsels. This expensive and labour-intensive method is having a drastic influence on herding practices—and on the animals' natural survival. But the alternative is malnutrition. As goavvi winters become frequent, reindeer are dying—some from starvation, others suffocating after falling into water bodies through unstable frozen surfaces. On one level, the work is a monument to them. "Through the stacking of elements, in a way I'm introducing the goavvi to London," says Sara.

Diverging Perspectives

This artwork also emphasizes the stark difference between the industrial view of energy as a commodity to be exploited for economic benefit and existence and the Sámi philosophy of energy as an inherent power in animals, people, and nature. The gallery's past as a industrial facility is linked with this, as is what the Sámi view as eco-imperialism by Nordic countries. In their efforts to be exemplars for clean sources, these states have locked horns with the Sámi over the development of windfarms, river barriers, and mines on their traditional territory; the Sámi argue their fundamental freedoms, ways of life, and culture are endangered. "It's challenging being such a limited population to defend yourself when the arguments are rooted in saving the world," Sara comments. "Mining practices has co-opted the language of environmentalism, but nonetheless it's just attempting to find better ways to persist in practices of expenditure."

Personal Conflicts

The artist and her relatives have themselves conflicted with the state authorities over its increasingly stringent rules on herding. A few years ago, Sara's brother initiated a sequence of unsuccessful legal cases over the mandatory slaughter of his livestock, apparently to stop overgrazing. As a show of solidarity, Sara produced a multi-year set of creations titled Pile O'Sápmi featuring a huge curtain of four hundred animal bones, which was exhibited at the 2017 show Documenta 14 and later obtained by the national institution, where it resides in the lobby.

Art as Advocacy

Among the community, art seems the only sphere in which they can be heard by people of other nations. Two years ago, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|