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Visitors to the renowned gallery are used to unusual displays in its spacious Turbine Hall. They have sunbathed under an simulated sun, slid down helter skelters, and witnessed automated sea creatures drifting through the air. Yet this marks the inaugural time they will be immersing themselves in the intricate nose passages of a reindeer. The current creative installation for this immense space—created by Native Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—welcomes visitors into a labyrinthine design modeled after the scaled-up interior of a reindeer's nose airways. Upon entering, they can stroll around or chill out on skins, tuning in on headphones to community leaders sharing narratives and knowledge.

Focus on the Nasal Passages

Why choose the nasal structure? It could sound quirky, but the installation honors a obscure biological feat: researchers have uncovered that in under a second, the reindeer's nose can raise the temperature of the incoming air it takes in by 80 degrees celsius, allowing the animal to survive in inhospitable Arctic climates. Scaling the nose to larger than human size, Sara says, "generates a sense of smallness that you as a human being are not in control over nature." She is a former reporter, writer for kids, and rights advocate, who comes from a herding family in northern Norway. "Maybe that generates the possibility to change your viewpoint or spark some humbleness," she adds.

A Celebration to Sámi Culture

The maze-like structure is among various components in Sara's absorbing exhibition celebrating the heritage, knowledge, and worldview of the Sámi, Europe's only Indigenous people. Partially migratory, the Sámi number about 100,000 people distributed across northern Norway, Finland, the Swedish Lapland, and Russia's Kola Peninsula (an region they call Sápmi). They have experienced persecution, forced assimilation, and eradication of their dialect by all four nations. By focusing on the reindeer, an animal at the core of the Sámi belief system and origin tale, the art also draws attention to the community's issues relating to the global warming, property rights, and colonialism.

Symbolism in Components

On the long entrance slope, there's a soaring, eighty-five-foot structure of skins ensnared by power and light cables. It represents a analogy for the societal frameworks limiting the Sámi. Partly a utility pole, part heavenly staircase, this part of the exhibit, called Goavve-, relates to the Sámi word for an harsh environmental condition, in which thick layers of ice form as varying weather melt and refreeze the snow, encasing the reindeers' key cold-season nourishment, moss. Goavvi is a outcome of global heating, which is happening up to at an accelerated rate in the Far North than in other regions.

A few years back, I traveled to see Sara in Guovdageaidnu during a severe cold period and joined Sámi reindeer keepers on their Arctic vehicles in chilly conditions as they carried carts of supplementary feed on to the exposed Arctic plains to provide by hand. The herd crowded round us, scratching the slippery ground in vain for vegetative pieces. This expensive and laborious procedure is having a significant effect on herding practices—and on the animals' self-sufficiency. But the choice is malnutrition. As these icy periods become commonplace, reindeer are succumbing—some from starvation, others suffocating after sinking in water bodies through unstable frozen surfaces. On one level, the art is a monument to them. "By overlapping of components, in a way I'm transporting the condition to London," says Sara.

Contrasting Worldviews

This artwork also underscores the clear divergence between the western interpretation of power as a resource to be utilized for gain and existence and the Sámi outlook of energy as an natural power in animals, humans, and nature. The gallery's history as a coal and oil power station is connected to this, as is what the Sámi see as eco-imperialism by Scandinavian states. In their efforts to be exemplars for sustainable power, these states have disagreed with the Sámi over the construction of turbine fields, water power facilities, and digging operations on their native soil; the Sámi argue their fundamental freedoms, incomes, and culture are threatened. "It's hard being such a small minority to stand your ground when the reasons are grounded in saving the world," Sara comments. "Resource exploitation has appropriated the discourse of sustainability, but still it's just aiming to find alternative ways to maintain patterns of consumption."

Personal Conflicts

Sara and her family have personally disagreed with the state authorities over its tightening rules on animal husbandry. A few years ago, Sara's sibling undertook a sequence of ultimately unsuccessful court actions over the mandatory slaughter of his livestock, ostensibly to stop vegetation depletion. To back him, Sara developed a four-year series of pieces named Pile O'Sápmi featuring a huge drape of four hundred cranial remains, which was shown at the the show Documenta 14 and later obtained by the National Museum of Oslo, where it is displayed in the lobby.

Creative Expression as Advocacy

Among the community, creative work appears the sole realm in which they can be listened to by people of other nations. Two years ago, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|