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Guests to the renowned gallery are used to surprising encounters in its expansive Turbine Hall. They have sunbathed under an man-made sun, slid down spiral slides, and observed robotic sea creatures drifting through the air. But this marks the first time they will be engaging themselves in the complex nasal passages of a reindeer. The current creative installation for this immense space—developed by Native Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—invites visitors into a maze-like structure inspired by the enlarged inside of a reindeer's nasal cavities. Inside, they can wander around or chill out on pelts, listening on headphones to Sámi elders sharing tales and knowledge.

Focus on the Nasal Passages

What's the focus on the nose? It may appear playful, but the artwork honors a rarely recognized scientific wonder: experts have found that in less than one second, the reindeer's nose can warm the ambient air it inhales by 80°C, allowing the creature to endure in harsh Arctic climates. Scaling the nose to human-scale dimensions, Sara explains, "creates a sense of insignificance that you as a individual are not dominant over nature." The artist is a ex- reporter, young adult author, and land defender, who comes from a reindeer-herding family in northern Norway. "Maybe that creates the possibility to change your viewpoint or evoke some humbleness," she continues.

An Homage to Sámi Culture

The winding installation is part of a features in Sara's absorbing commission honoring the heritage, knowledge, and beliefs of the Sámi, Europe's only Indigenous people. Partially migratory, the Sámi total about 100,000 people ranged across the Norwegian north, Finland, Sweden, and the Kola region (an territory they call Sápmi). They've faced persecution, integration policies, and suppression of their language by all four nations. Through highlighting the reindeer, an animal at the core of the Sámi mythology and founding narrative, the work also spotlights the group's issues connected to the climate crisis, property rights, and colonialism.

Meaning in Components

On the long entry ramp, there's a soaring, 26-metre formation of pelts entangled by electrical wires. It represents a symbol for the political and economic systems restricting the Sámi. Part pylon, part spiritual ascent, this part of the exhibit, titled Goavve-, refers to the Sámi word for an extreme weather phenomenon, in which dense layers of ice appear as fluctuating conditions melt and solidify again the snow, encasing the reindeers' key winter sustenance, fungus. Goavvi is a outcome of climate change, which is happening up to at an accelerated rate in the Arctic than in other regions.

Three years ago, I traveled to see Sara in the Norwegian far north during a goavvi winter and went with Sámi herders on their snowmobiles in freezing temperatures as they hauled carts of food pellets on to the wind-scoured tundra to distribute through labor. The reindeer gathered round us, digging the icy ground in vain for vegetative bits. This resource-intensive and laborious method is having a significant impact on reindeer husbandry—and on the animals' natural survival. However the choice is malnutrition. As these icy periods become commonplace, reindeer are perishing—some from lack of food, others submerging after falling into water bodies through unstable frozen surfaces. In a sense, the work is a monument to them. "By overlapping of elements, in a way I'm bringing the goavvi to London," says Sara.

Diverging Worldviews

The installation also emphasizes the clear divergence between the western interpretation of energy as a resource to be exploited for economic benefit and livelihood and the Sámi philosophy of vitality as an natural power in animals, humans, and nature. The gallery's past as a industrial facility is linked with this, as is what the Sámi view as environmental exploitation by Scandinavian states. While attempting to be leaders for renewable energy, these states have clashed with the Sámi over the development of wind energy projects, river barriers, and extraction sites on their traditional territory; the Sámi assert their legal protections, livelihoods, and culture are endangered. "It's very difficult being such a limited population to protect your rights when the reasons are rooted in global sustainability," Sara comments. "Mining practices has appropriated the rhetoric of environmentalism, but nonetheless it's just aiming to find more suitable ways to persist in practices of use."

Family Challenges

She and her kin have themselves clashed with the Norwegian government over its ever-stricter regulations on herding. In 2016, Sara's sibling embarked on a set of finally failed legal cases over the mandatory slaughter of his herd, supposedly to stop vegetation depletion. As a show of solidarity, Sara created a four-year collection of artworks titled Pile O'Sápmi featuring a massive screen of four hundred reindeer skulls, which was exhibited at the 2017's event Documenta 14 and later acquired by the National Museum of Oslo, where it is displayed in the lobby.

Art as Activism

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