Delving into the Scent of Apprehension: Máret Ánne Sara Reimagines The Gallery's Turbine Hall with Arctic Deer Themed Exhibit

Attendees to Tate Modern are accustomed to unexpected encounters in its expansive Turbine Hall. They have sunbathed under an simulated sun, descended down amusement rides, and witnessed automated jellyfish hovering through the air. However this marks the initial time they will be venturing themselves in the complex nasal cavities of a reindeer. The current creative installation for this huge space—designed by Native Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—invites visitors into a winding design modeled after the expanded interior of a reindeer's nasal airways. Once inside, they can stroll around or chill out on skins, listening on headphones to Sámi elders telling stories and insights.

Focus on the Nasal Passages

Why the nose? It may seem playful, but the exhibit pays tribute to a rarely recognized scientific wonder: experts have found that in under a second, the reindeer's nose can warm the ambient air it breathes in by 80°C, helping the animal to survive in harsh Arctic climates. Scaling the nose to human-scale dimensions, Sara notes, "produces a sense of inferiority that you as a human being are not in control over nature." The artist is a ex- journalist, writer for kids, and land defender, who hails from a pastoral family in northern Norway. "Perhaps that generates the potential to shift your viewpoint or evoke some modesty," she states.

A Celebration to Traditional Ways

The maze-like structure is one of several features in Sara's engaging art project honoring the traditions, science, and worldview of the Sámi, the sole native group in Europe. Traditionally mobile, the Sámi count roughly 100,000 people spread across northern Norway, the Finnish Arctic, the Swedish Lapland, and the Russian Arctic (an territory they call Sápmi). They've faced oppression, forced assimilation, and suppression of their language by all four states. By focusing on the reindeer, an creature at the core of the Sámi cosmology and creation story, the art also spotlights the people's challenges associated with the global warming, land dispossession, and external control.

Symbolism in Elements

At the long entrance slope, there's a looming, eighty-five-foot sculpture of skins entangled by power and light cables. It represents a metaphor for the governance and financial structures limiting the Sámi. Like an electrical tower, part celestial ladder, this section of the exhibit, titled Goavve-, relates to the Sámi term for an severe climatic event, whereby dense sheets of ice develop as varying temperatures liquefy and solidify again the snow, locking in the reindeers' primary winter sustenance, lichen. This phenomenon is a outcome of climate change, which is happening up to at an accelerated rate in the Far North than elsewhere.

Previously, I visited Sara in Guovdageaidnu during a icy season and accompanied Sámi herders on their snowmobiles in freezing temperatures as they transported carts of food pellets on to the barren frozen landscape to provide through labor. The reindeer surrounded round us, pawing the frozen ground in vain attempts for lichen-covered pieces. This resource-intensive and labour-intensive method is having a severe impact on animal rearing—and on the animals' independence. Yet the choice is malnutrition. As these icy periods become commonplace, reindeer are perishing—a number from hunger, others submerging after falling into lakes and rivers through unstable frozen surfaces. To some extent, the installation is a monument to them. "With the layering of elements, in a way I'm transporting the phenomenon to London," says Sara.

Diverging Perspectives

The installation also highlights the stark divergence between the modern understanding of energy as a commodity to be utilized for profit and survival and the Sámi worldview of life force as an innate essence in creatures, humans, and the environment. This venue's history as a fossil fuel plant is connected to this, as is what the Sámi see as green colonialism by regional governments. In their efforts to be exemplars for sustainable power, Scandinavian countries have clashed with the Sámi over the building of wind energy projects, river barriers, and extraction sites on their native soil; the Sámi contend their human rights, ways of life, and traditions are endangered. "It's very difficult being such a small minority to protect your rights when the justifications are rooted in environmental protection," Sara notes. "Extractivism has appropriated the language of environmentalism, but yet it's just striving to find alternative ways to persist in patterns of use."

Family Conflicts

The artist and her kin have themselves disagreed with the state authorities over its tightening rules on reindeer management. A few years ago, Sara's sibling embarked on a set of finally failed court actions over the required reduction of his animals, ostensibly to stop excessive feeding. In support, Sara created a four-year series of pieces titled Pile O'Sápmi comprising a colossal drape of numerous cranial remains, which was shown at the the art exhibition Documenta 14 and later acquired by the public gallery, where it resides in the lobby.

Art as Awareness

For many Sámi, creative work appears the sole domain in which they can be understood by outsiders. In 2022, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|