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Visitors to the renowned gallery are familiar to unexpected encounters in its vast Turbine Hall. They've relaxed under an man-made sun, slid down spiral slides, and observed automated jellyfish hovering through the air. However this marks the inaugural time they will be engaging themselves in the intricate nose passages of a reindeer. The current artistic project for this huge space—designed by Indigenous Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—invites visitors into a winding design inspired by the scaled-up inside of a reindeer's nasal passages. Inside, they can stroll around or chill out on skins, listening on headphones to tribal seniors sharing stories and insights.

Focus on the Nasal Passages

Why the nose? It may sound quirky, but the artwork honors a obscure biological feat: scientists have found that in under a second, the reindeer's nose can warm the surrounding air it inhales by eighty degrees, allowing the animal to endure in extreme Arctic conditions. Scaling the nose to larger than human size, Sara says, "creates a feeling of inferiority that you as a individual are not dominant over nature." Sara is a ex- reporter, children's author, and land defender, who is from a pastoral family in the far north of Norway. "Perhaps that generates the chance to alter your perspective or trigger some humbleness," she states.

A Celebration to Sámi Culture

The winding installation is part of a components in Sara's absorbing commission honoring the traditions, knowledge, and philosophy of the Sámi, Europe's only Indigenous people. Partially migratory, the Sámi total approximately 100,000 people ranged across the Norwegian north, the Finnish Arctic, the Swedish Lapland, and the Kola region (an territory they call Sápmi). They have faced discrimination, cultural suppression, and repression of their tongue by all four states. With an emphasis on the reindeer, an animal at the heart of the Sámi belief system and creation story, the work also spotlights the people's struggles relating to the climate crisis, loss of territory, and colonialism.

Meaning in Components

At the extended entry slope, there's a looming, 26-meter sculpture of reindeer hides trapped by utility lines. It can be read as a analogy for the societal frameworks restricting the Sámi. Like an electrical tower, part spiritual ascent, this component of the artwork, called Goavve-, refers to the Sámi name for an severe climatic event, wherein solid layers of ice form as varying weather thaw and ice over the snow, encasing the reindeers' primary winter nourishment, fungus. The condition is a consequence of climate change, which is happening up to much more rapidly in the Arctic than in other regions.

Previously, I visited Sara in Guovdageaidnu during a severe cold period and went with Sámi reindeer keepers on their motorized sleds in chilly conditions as they transported containers of animal nutrition on to the exposed frozen landscape to provide by hand. The herd gathered round us, scratching the icy ground in vain attempts for mossy bits. This costly and labour-intensive procedure is having a severe effect on reindeer husbandry—and on the animals' self-sufficiency. But the alternative is malnutrition. When such conditions become frequent, reindeer are succumbing—some from hunger, others suffocating after plunging into water bodies through unstable frozen surfaces. In a sense, the art is a tribute to them. "Through the stacking of materials, in a way I'm bringing the phenomenon to London," says Sara.

Opposing Belief Systems

The installation also underscores the stark divergence between the industrial view of power as a asset to be harnessed for gain and livelihood and the Sámi outlook of vitality as an innate essence in animals, humans, and land. This venue's legacy as a coal and oil power station is linked with this, as is what the Sámi view as green colonialism by regional governments. As they strive to be leaders for sustainable power, Scandinavian countries have clashed with the Sámi over the building of turbine fields, hydroelectric dams, and digging operations on their native soil; the Sámi argue their fundamental freedoms, livelihoods, and way of life are threatened. "It's challenging being such a tiny group to protect your rights when the reasons are based on environmental protection," Sara comments. "Extractivism has appropriated the language of environmentalism, but still it's just striving to find alternative ways to persist in habits of use."

Individual Struggles

Sara and her family have themselves clashed with the Norwegian government over its increasingly stringent regulations on herding. In 2016, Sara's brother undertook a series of unsuccessful court actions over the forced culling of his herd, apparently to stop overgrazing. As a show of solidarity, Sara developed a extended set of artworks titled Pile O'Sápmi comprising a massive screen of four hundred cranial remains, which was exhibited at the 2017's art exhibition Documenta 14 and later purchased by the National Museum of Oslo, where it resides in the lobby.

Creative Expression as Activism

For many Sámi, creative work seems the sole realm in which they can be heard by people of other nations. Recently, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|