Exploring the Aroma of Fear: The Sámi Artist Transforms Tate's Turbine Hall with Reindeer Influenced Installation

Visitors to Tate Modern are used to surprising encounters in its expansive Turbine Hall. They have relaxed under an man-made sun, descended down amusement rides, and witnessed AI-powered jellyfish floating through the air. However this marks the inaugural time they will be engaging themselves in the complex nasal passages of a reindeer. The newest artistic project for this immense space—created by Native Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—encourages gallerygoers into a labyrinthine design modeled after the enlarged inside of a reindeer's nasal airways. Upon entering, they can meander around or relax on skins, listening on headphones to tribal seniors imparting narratives and insights.

The Significance of the Nose

Why the nose? It might sound whimsical, but the exhibit celebrates a rarely recognized biological feat: experts have discovered that in less than one second, the reindeer's nose can raise the temperature of the incoming air it takes in by eighty degrees, allowing the creature to survive in inhospitable Arctic conditions. Expanding the nose to larger than human size, Sara explains, "generates a perception of smallness that you as a human being are not in control over nature." She is a former journalist, young adult author, and land defender, who comes from a pastoral family in the far north of Norway. "Maybe that fosters the possibility to change your perspective or spark some humility," she adds.

A Tribute to Sámi Culture

The winding structure is among various elements in Sara's immersive exhibition showcasing the culture, science, and philosophy of the Sámi, the sole native group in Europe. Semi-nomadic, the Sámi total about 100,000 people ranged across northern Norway, Finland, the Swedish Lapland, and the Kola region (an territory they call Sápmi). They have endured oppression, cultural suppression, and eradication of their language by all four nations. By focusing on the reindeer, an animal at the center of the Sámi cosmology and origin tale, the art also draws attention to the community's issues connected to the climate crisis, loss of territory, and imperialism.

Symbolism in Components

On the lengthy entrance ramp, there's a looming, 26-meter sculpture of reindeer hides ensnared by electrical wires. It represents a analogy for the political and economic systems restricting the Sámi. Part pylon, part heavenly staircase, this part of the artwork, titled Goavve-, points to the Sámi word for an severe climatic event, in which solid layers of ice develop as fluctuating weather thaw and refreeze the snow, encasing the reindeers' key winter nourishment, fungus. This phenomenon is a outcome of global heating, which is taking place up to at an accelerated rate in the Arctic than globally.

Three years ago, I met with Sara in a remote town during a severe cold period and accompanied Sámi pastoralists on their snowmobiles in biting cold as they hauled containers of food pellets on to the wind-scoured Arctic plains to dispense through labor. These animals gathered round us, scratching the frozen ground in vain for mossy pieces. This resource-intensive and labour-intensive procedure is having a significant influence on reindeer husbandry—and on the animals' independence. But the other option is starvation. As these icy periods become frequent, reindeer are succumbing—some from starvation, others suffocating after plunging into streams through thinning ice sheets. In a sense, the art is a memorial to them. "Through the stacking of materials, in a way I'm bringing the condition to London," says Sara.

Opposing Belief Systems

The sculpture also highlights the sharp divergence between the industrial understanding of power as a asset to be utilized for gain and livelihood and the Sámi outlook of energy as an inherent essence in animals, humans, and the environment. The gallery's history as a industrial facility is tied up in this, as is what the Sámi view as eco-imperialism by regional governments. In their efforts to be standard bearers for clean sources, these states have disagreed with the Sámi over the building of wind energy projects, hydroelectric dams, and digging operations on their ancestral land; the Sámi contend their legal protections, incomes, and way of life are threatened. "It's challenging being such a small minority to protect your rights when the reasons are based on saving the world," Sara comments. "Resource exploitation has adopted the language of ecology, but nonetheless it's just aiming to find better ways to maintain practices of expenditure."

Family Struggles

Sara and her family have themselves clashed with the national administration over its increasingly stringent rules on reindeer management. In 2016, Sara's sibling initiated a series of unsuccessful lawsuits over the required reduction of his livestock, apparently to stop overgrazing. In support, Sara created a extended series of pieces called Pile O'Sápmi including a huge curtain of four hundred animal bones, which was displayed at the 2017 event Documenta 14 and later purchased by the National Museum of Oslo, where it resides in the entrance.

Creative Expression as Awareness

Among the community, visual expression seems the only domain in which they can be heard by outsiders. In 2022, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|