Delving into the Scent of Fear: Máret Ánne Sara Transforms The Gallery's Turbine Hall with Arctic Deer Themed Artwork

Visitors to Tate Modern are familiar to unexpected experiences in its vast Turbine Hall. They have sunbathed under an artificial sun, descended down amusement rides, and seen AI-powered jellyfish hovering through the air. Yet this marks the initial time they will be venturing themselves in the intricate nose passages of a reindeer. The latest artist commission for this immense space—developed by Indigenous Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—encourages visitors into a labyrinthine construction inspired by the expanded interior of a reindeer's nose cavities. Once inside, they can stroll around or relax on skins, tuning in on earphones to community leaders imparting tales and knowledge.

Focus on the Nasal Passages

Why the nose? It might seem quirky, but the exhibit pays tribute to a rarely recognized natural marvel: experts have uncovered that in a fraction of a second, the reindeer's nose can raise the temperature of the incoming air it inhales by 80°C, helping the creature to endure in extreme Arctic temperatures. Enlarging the nose to larger than human size, Sara explains, "creates a perception of insignificance that you as a individual are not in control over nature." Sara is a ex- reporter, writer for kids, and environmental activist, who is from a reindeer-herding family in the far north of Norway. "Perhaps that generates the chance to change your perspective or spark some humility," she states.

An Homage to Sámi Culture

The winding structure is part of a features in Sara's engaging exhibition honoring the culture, science, and philosophy of the Sámi, the continent's original inhabitants. Traditionally mobile, the Sámi number about 100,000 people distributed across northern Norway, Finland, the Swedish Lapland, and the Russian Arctic (an area they call Sápmi). They've experienced persecution, integration policies, and suppression of their tongue by all four countries. By focusing on the reindeer, an creature at the heart of the Sámi cosmology and founding narrative, the work also highlights the people's challenges associated with the climate crisis, loss of territory, and imperialism.

Symbolism in Components

At the lengthy entrance ramp, there's a towering, 26-metre sculpture of skins entangled by power and light cables. It serves as a metaphor for the political and economic systems limiting the Sámi. Partly a utility pole, part celestial ladder, this part of the exhibit, called Goavve-, points to the Sámi name for an severe climatic event, whereby dense coatings of ice form as varying temperatures thaw and solidify again the snow, encasing the reindeers' key cold-season food, fungus. The condition is a outcome of climate change, which is occurring up to four times faster in the Polar region than elsewhere.

A few years back, I met with Sara in Guovdageaidnu during a icy season and joined Sámi pastoralists on their motorized sleds in chilly conditions as they hauled trailers of supplementary feed on to the exposed Arctic plains to provide through labor. These animals gathered round us, digging the icy ground in vain attempts for mossy morsels. This resource-intensive and demanding process is having a drastic effect on herding practices—and on the animals' self-sufficiency. But the alternative is death. When such conditions become routine, reindeer are dying—some from lack of food, others submerging after sinking in lakes and rivers through prematurely melting ice. On one level, the installation is a memorial to them. "Through the stacking of components, in a way I'm introducing the goavvi to London," says Sara.

Diverging Belief Systems

This artwork also underscores the sharp difference between the western interpretation of electricity as a commodity to be utilized for gain and livelihood and the Sámi worldview of life force as an natural power in animals, humans, and the environment. The gallery's legacy as a coal and oil power station is tied up in this, as is what the Sámi consider eco-imperialism by Nordic countries. While attempting to be leaders for sustainable power, Scandinavian countries have clashed with the Sámi over the construction of windfarms, hydroelectric dams, and mines on their ancestral land; the Sámi assert their legal protections, incomes, and traditions are threatened. "It's very difficult being such a limited population to defend yourself when the arguments are based on global sustainability," Sara observes. "Resource exploitation has co-opted the discourse of environmentalism, but nonetheless it's just striving to find better ways to maintain practices of expenditure."

Individual Challenges

Sara and her family have themselves conflicted with the Norwegian government over its increasingly stringent rules on animal husbandry. Previously, Sara's sibling initiated a sequence of unsuccessful lawsuits over the mandatory slaughter of his livestock, apparently to stop vegetation depletion. As a show of solidarity, Sara created a extended set of creations called Pile O'Sápmi comprising a colossal screen of four hundred animal bones, which was shown at the 2017's event Documenta 14 and later acquired by the National Museum of Oslo, where it hangs in the entryway.

Creative Expression as Awareness

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