Unveiling the Scent of Apprehension: The Sámi Artist Reimagines Tate's Turbine Hall with Arctic Deer Themed Exhibit

Visitors to the renowned gallery are accustomed to surprising encounters in its vast Turbine Hall. They've sunbathed under an artificial sun, slid down amusement rides, and observed robotic jellyfish hovering through the air. However this marks the first time they will be immersing themselves in the complex nose cavities of a reindeer. The latest creative installation for this immense space—created by Native Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—encourages patrons into a labyrinthine design based on the expanded interior of a reindeer's nose passages. Once inside, they can wander around or unwind on reindeer hides, tuning in on earphones to community leaders imparting tales and wisdom.

The Significance of the Nose

Why choose the nasal structure? It might sound whimsical, but the exhibit honors a obscure biological feat: experts have discovered that in a fraction of a second, the reindeer's nose can heat the surrounding air it takes in by 80°C, enabling the creature to thrive in harsh Arctic climates. Scaling the nose to larger than human size, Sara explains, "produces a feeling of inferiority that you as a individual are not in control over nature." The artist is a ex- reporter, children's author, and land defender, who hails from a pastoral family in the far north of Norway. "Perhaps that generates the chance to alter your viewpoint or spark some humility," she continues.

An Homage to Sámi Culture

The labyrinthine installation is part of a elements in Sara's absorbing commission showcasing the culture, knowledge, and worldview of the Sámi, the continent's original inhabitants. Traditionally mobile, the Sámi count approximately 100,000 people spread across the Norwegian north, Finland, the Swedish Lapland, and the Kola region (an area they call Sápmi). They've faced persecution, forced assimilation, and suppression of their language by all four countries. With an emphasis on the reindeer, an creature at the heart of the Sámi cosmology and origin tale, the art also highlights the people's struggles relating to the environmental emergency, land dispossession, and colonialism.

Metaphor in Materials

At the extended entry ramp, there's a towering, eighty-five-foot formation of reindeer hides ensnared by electrical wires. It represents a metaphor for the political and economic systems limiting the Sámi. Partly a utility pole, part celestial ladder, this section of the exhibit, called Goavve-, points to the Sámi name for an extreme weather phenomenon, whereby solid layers of ice develop as varying conditions melt and refreeze the snow, encasing the reindeers' primary cold-season nourishment, lichen. This phenomenon is a outcome of global heating, which is happening up to four times faster in the Polar region than in other regions.

Three years ago, I visited Sara in Guovdageaidnu during a icy season and joined Sámi herders on their Arctic vehicles in freezing temperatures as they carried containers of animal nutrition on to the wind-scoured tundra to dispense manually. The herd crowded round us, pawing the frozen ground in futility for lichen-covered morsels. This resource-intensive and labour-intensive process is having a significant influence on herding practices—and on the animals' independence. But the other option is starvation. When such conditions become routine, reindeer are perishing—a number from starvation, others drowning after plunging into streams through unstable frozen surfaces. In a sense, the work is a monument to them. "Through the stacking of components, in a way I'm introducing the phenomenon to London," says Sara.

Opposing Belief Systems

The installation also emphasizes the sharp contrast between the western understanding of electricity as a asset to be harnessed for gain and existence and the Sámi worldview of vitality as an inherent life force in creatures, people, and land. Tate Modern's legacy as a industrial facility is linked with this, as is what the Sámi view as green colonialism by Nordic countries. While attempting to be exemplars for renewable energy, these states have locked horns with the Sámi over the building of turbine fields, river barriers, and digging operations on their ancestral land; the Sámi contend their fundamental freedoms, livelihoods, and way of life are threatened. "It's hard being such a tiny group to defend yourself when the arguments are grounded in global sustainability," Sara observes. "Mining practices has appropriated the rhetoric of sustainability, but nonetheless it's just aiming to find better ways to maintain habits of use."

Individual Conflicts

Sara and her relatives have themselves disagreed with the state authorities over its tightening policies on reindeer management. In 2016, Sara's brother undertook a sequence of finally failed lawsuits over the forced culling of his herd, ostensibly to stop excessive feeding. To back him, Sara produced a four-year set of creations titled Pile O'Sápmi featuring a huge drape of numerous animal bones, which was exhibited at the the art exhibition Documenta 14 and later obtained by the public gallery, where it is displayed in the entryway.

Art as Advocacy

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