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Visitors to the renowned gallery are accustomed to unexpected encounters in its expansive Turbine Hall. They've basked under an simulated sun, descended down spiral slides, and seen robotic jellyfish hovering through the air. Yet this marks the initial time they will be engaging themselves in the intricate nasal chambers of a reindeer. The current artist commission for this cavernous space—created by Native Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—welcomes gallerygoers into a maze-like structure based on the scaled-up interior of a reindeer's nose passages. Upon entering, they can stroll around or unwind on pelts, listening on headphones to community leaders sharing narratives and insights.

Focus on the Nasal Passages

Why choose the nasal structure? It might sound quirky, but the exhibit pays tribute to a rarely recognized scientific wonder: researchers have found that in under a second, the reindeer's nose can heat the surrounding air it inhales by 80 degrees celsius, enabling the creature to survive in harsh Arctic climates. Scaling the nose to larger than human size, Sara says, "creates a perception of inferiority that you as a person are not superior over nature." Sara is a ex- journalist, children's author, and land defender, who comes from a reindeer-herding family in the far north of Norway. "Perhaps that generates the chance to shift your viewpoint or evoke some modesty," she states.

A Celebration to Traditional Ways

The labyrinthine installation is among various elements in Sara's immersive commission showcasing the heritage, understanding, and philosophy of the Sámi, the continent's original inhabitants. Partially migratory, the Sámi count roughly 100,000 people spread across the Norwegian north, the Finnish Arctic, Sweden, and Russia's Kola Peninsula (an region they call Sápmi). They have experienced oppression, integration policies, and repression of their dialect by all four nations. With an emphasis on the reindeer, an creature at the center of the Sámi cosmology and creation story, the art also draws attention to the community's challenges associated with the global warming, loss of territory, and external control.

Metaphor in Elements

At the lengthy entrance ramp, there's a looming, 26-metre sculpture of skins entangled by power and light cables. It represents a symbol for the political and economic systems limiting the Sámi. Part pylon, part heavenly staircase, this section of the artwork, named Goavve-, points to the Sámi term for an harsh environmental condition, wherein dense coatings of ice appear as fluctuating conditions thaw and ice over the snow, encasing the reindeers' key cold-season nourishment, lichen. This phenomenon is a consequence of planetary warming, which is occurring up to four times faster in the Far North than elsewhere.

Previously, I met with Sara in the Norwegian far north during a severe cold period and joined Sámi pastoralists on their Arctic vehicles in chilly conditions as they hauled trailers of supplementary feed on to the exposed tundra to provide through labor. These animals gathered round us, digging the slippery ground in vain for vegetative pieces. This costly and laborious procedure is having a severe effect on reindeer husbandry—and on the animals' self-sufficiency. However the alternative is starvation. When such conditions become routine, reindeer are dying—a number from lack of food, others suffocating after plunging into lakes and rivers through prematurely melting ice. In a sense, the installation is a monument to them. "Through the stacking of materials, in a way I'm bringing the goavvi to London," says Sara.

Contrasting Worldviews

This artwork also underscores the sharp difference between the industrial view of power as a commodity to be exploited for profit and survival and the Sámi outlook of energy as an natural life force in animals, people, and the environment. The gallery's history as a fossil fuel plant is tied up in this, as is what the Sámi view as environmental exploitation by Scandinavian states. While attempting to be exemplars for renewable energy, these states have clashed with the Sámi over the development of turbine fields, river barriers, and mines on their native soil; the Sámi assert their human rights, livelihoods, and way of life are threatened. "It's challenging being such a tiny group to defend yourself when the arguments are based on environmental protection," Sara notes. "Mining practices has co-opted the language of sustainability, but still it's just attempting to find alternative ways to maintain practices of consumption."

Personal Conflicts

She and her kin have themselves disagreed with the Norwegian government over its tightening rules on animal husbandry. A few years ago, Sara's sibling embarked on a sequence of unsuccessful court actions over the forced culling of his livestock, ostensibly to stop overgrazing. To back him, Sara developed a four-year collection of artworks called Pile O'Sápmi featuring a colossal drape of four hundred cranial remains, which was displayed at the 2017 show Documenta 14 and later purchased by the National Museum of Oslo, where it is displayed in the lobby.

The Role of Art in Activism

For numerous Indigenous people, visual expression seems the exclusive realm in which they can be listened to by the global community. Two years ago, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|