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Attendees to the renowned gallery are familiar to unusual experiences in its expansive Turbine Hall. They've sunbathed under an man-made sun, slid down helter skelters, and witnessed automated jellyfish hovering through the air. But this marks the first time they will be immersing themselves in the complex nasal cavities of a reindeer. The current artistic project for this cavernous space—designed by Native Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—invites patrons into a winding design modeled after the expanded inside of a reindeer's nasal airways. Inside, they can stroll around or unwind on pelts, listening on headphones to Sámi elders telling tales and knowledge.

Focus on the Nasal Passages

Why choose the nasal structure? It might appear whimsical, but the exhibit pays tribute to a obscure natural marvel: researchers have discovered that in less than one second, the reindeer's nose can warm the surrounding air it takes in by 80°C, enabling the creature to thrive in harsh Arctic temperatures. Scaling the nose to human-scale dimensions, Sara notes, "produces a sense of smallness that you as a individual are not superior over nature." She is a former journalist, children's author, and environmental activist, who hails from a pastoral family in the far north of Norway. "Maybe that fosters the chance to alter your outlook or evoke some modesty," she adds.

An Homage to Sámi Culture

The winding design is one of several elements in Sara's engaging art project honoring the traditions, knowledge, and worldview of the Sámi, Europe's only Indigenous people. Semi-nomadic, the Sámi count roughly 100,000 people distributed across northern Norway, Finland, the Swedish Lapland, and Russia's Kola Peninsula (an area they call Sápmi). They have faced oppression, integration policies, and eradication of their tongue by all four nations. With an emphasis on the reindeer, an animal at the heart of the Sámi cosmology and origin tale, the installation also spotlights the group's issues associated with the global warming, land dispossession, and external control.

Metaphor in Materials

At the long entry ramp, there's a towering, 26-metre sculpture of reindeer hides ensnared by power and light cables. It represents a metaphor for the societal frameworks constraining the Sámi. Like an electrical tower, part celestial ladder, this part of the artwork, named Goavve-, points to the Sámi word for an extreme weather phenomenon, in which solid coatings of ice form as varying conditions thaw and ice over the snow, locking in the reindeers' key winter nourishment, lichen. Goavvi is a result of planetary warming, which is taking place up to much more rapidly in the Arctic than in other regions.

Three years ago, I visited Sara in Guovdageaidnu during a goavvi winter and joined Sámi herders on their Arctic vehicles in biting cold as they hauled containers of food pellets on to the exposed frozen landscape to provide by hand. The herd surrounded round us, digging the frozen ground in vain attempts for mossy pieces. This resource-intensive and labour-intensive process is having a significant impact on animal rearing—and on the animals' self-sufficiency. But the other option is malnutrition. As goavvi winters become commonplace, reindeer are dying—a number from lack of food, others drowning after falling into streams through prematurely melting ice. On one level, the installation is a tribute to them. "Through the stacking of materials, in a way I'm transporting the goavvi to London," says Sara.

Contrasting Worldviews

The sculpture also emphasizes the stark difference between the western understanding of energy as a asset to be exploited for economic benefit and existence and the Sámi worldview of life force as an natural power in creatures, people, and nature. The gallery's past as a fossil fuel plant is connected to this, as is what the Sámi see as environmental exploitation by Scandinavian states. As they strive to be exemplars for renewable energy, these states have locked horns with the Sámi over the development of windfarms, hydroelectric dams, and mines on their traditional territory; the Sámi argue their legal protections, incomes, and culture are threatened. "It's challenging being such a tiny group to stand your ground when the arguments are based on global sustainability," Sara comments. "Extractivism has appropriated the rhetoric of sustainability, but still it's just aiming to find alternative ways to persist in habits of expenditure."

Individual Conflicts

The artist and her kin have themselves disagreed with the Norwegian government over its tightening policies on herding. Previously, Sara's brother undertook a series of ultimately unsuccessful lawsuits over the required reduction of his herd, supposedly to stop vegetation depletion. As a show of solidarity, Sara produced a four-year collection of pieces titled Pile O'Sápmi including a huge curtain of four hundred reindeer skulls, which was shown at the the event Documenta 14 and later obtained by the national institution, where it hangs in the entrance.

The Role of Art in Activism

For many Sámi, visual expression seems the exclusive realm in which they can be understood by outsiders. Two years ago, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|