Unveiling the Aroma of Apprehension: Máret Ánne Sara Reimagines Tate's Exhibition Space with Reindeer Themed Artwork

Attendees to the renowned gallery are accustomed to unusual displays in its spacious Turbine Hall. They have relaxed under an man-made sun, descended down helter skelters, and witnessed robotic sea creatures floating through the air. Yet this marks the inaugural time they will be immersing themselves in the detailed nose chambers of a reindeer. The newest artist commission for this huge space—designed by Indigenous Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—invites visitors into a winding construction modeled after the expanded inside of a reindeer's nose cavities. Upon entering, they can meander around or unwind on reindeer hides, listening on earphones to Sámi elders sharing stories and wisdom.

Focus on the Nasal Passages

Why the nose? It could sound playful, but the installation honors a obscure scientific wonder: scientists have found that in a fraction of a second, the reindeer's nose can heat the incoming air it inhales by 80 degrees celsius, helping the creature to thrive in harsh Arctic temperatures. Enlarging the nose to human-scale dimensions, Sara explains, "generates a feeling of insignificance that you as a human being are not dominant over nature." Sara is a former writer, young adult author, and land defender, who is from a pastoral family in the far north of Norway. "Possibly that generates the potential to alter your perspective or spark some humility," she continues.

A Celebration to Sámi Culture

The labyrinthine structure is among various elements in Sara's absorbing art project celebrating the heritage, knowledge, and worldview of the Sámi, Europe's only Indigenous people. Traditionally mobile, the Sámi total roughly 100,000 people spread across northern Norway, the Finnish Arctic, Sweden, and Russia's Kola Peninsula (an region they call Sápmi). They've faced persecution, forced assimilation, and suppression of their language by all four states. By focusing on the reindeer, an creature at the center of the Sámi mythology and founding narrative, the art also highlights the people's issues connected to the environmental emergency, loss of territory, and colonialism.

Symbolism in Components

Along the lengthy entrance slope, there's a soaring, 26-metre sculpture of skins trapped by utility lines. It represents a metaphor for the political and economic systems constraining the Sámi. Like an electrical tower, part celestial ladder, this part of the exhibit, titled Goavve-, points to the Sámi word for an harsh environmental condition, wherein dense layers of ice develop as fluctuating weather melt and ice over the snow, encasing the reindeers' primary cold-season nourishment, moss. Goavvi is a consequence of global heating, which is occurring up to much more rapidly in the Far North than in other regions.

Three years ago, I met with Sara in Guovdageaidnu during a icy season and went with Sámi pastoralists on their snowmobiles in biting cold as they carried trailers of food pellets on to the barren frozen landscape to distribute manually. These animals gathered round us, digging the icy ground in vain attempts for mossy bits. This resource-intensive and demanding process is having a drastic effect on herding practices—and on the animals' self-sufficiency. But the other option is starvation. When such conditions become routine, reindeer are dying—some from starvation, others submerging after falling into lakes and rivers through thinning ice sheets. To some extent, the installation is a memorial to them. "With the layering of materials, in a way I'm transporting the goavvi to London," says Sara.

Diverging Worldviews

The installation also underscores the sharp divergence between the modern view of electricity as a asset to be utilized for economic benefit and existence and the Sámi outlook of energy as an natural essence in creatures, individuals, and land. This venue's legacy as a coal and oil power station is connected to this, as is what the Sámi consider eco-imperialism by Nordic countries. As they strive to be exemplars for sustainable power, Scandinavian countries have clashed with the Sámi over the development of wind energy projects, water power facilities, and mines on their ancestral land; the Sámi argue their human rights, incomes, and way of life are endangered. "It's hard being such a limited population to defend yourself when the reasons are based on environmental protection," Sara comments. "Extractivism has appropriated the rhetoric of sustainability, but still it's just aiming to find better ways to continue habits of expenditure."

Family Conflicts

Sara and her kin have themselves disagreed with the state authorities over its increasingly stringent rules on reindeer management. Previously, Sara's brother embarked on a series of ultimately unsuccessful court actions over the required reduction of his livestock, ostensibly to stop vegetation depletion. As a show of solidarity, Sara developed a multi-year collection of artworks titled Pile O'Sápmi comprising a huge screen of four hundred animal bones, which was displayed at the the art exhibition Documenta 14 and later acquired by the public gallery, where it resides in the entrance.

Art as Activism

For many Sámi, art seems the exclusive domain in which they can be understood by the global community. Recently, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|