Delving into the Aroma of Fear: The Sámi Artist Transforms Tate's Exhibition Space with Reindeer Inspired Installation

Visitors to Tate Modern are used to unexpected displays in its vast Turbine Hall. They have basked under an simulated sun, glided down spiral slides, and observed AI-powered sea creatures floating through the air. But this marks the initial time they will be engaging themselves in the detailed nasal chambers of a reindeer. The latest artist commission for this huge space—developed by Indigenous Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—welcomes visitors into a labyrinthine design inspired by the enlarged inside of a reindeer's nasal passages. Upon entering, they can stroll around or chill out on skins, tuning in on headphones to Sámi elders imparting tales and knowledge.

The Significance of the Nose

Why choose the nasal structure? It might seem quirky, but the installation honors a little-known scientific wonder: scientists have found that in under a second, the reindeer's nose can warm the ambient air it breathes in by eighty degrees, allowing the creature to survive in extreme Arctic climates. Expanding the nose to human-scale dimensions, Sara explains, "generates a feeling of inferiority that you as a individual are not dominant over nature." She is a former journalist, children's author, and land defender, who is from a herding family in the far north of Norway. "Maybe that creates the potential to change your outlook or trigger some humbleness," she states.

An Homage to Traditional Ways

The maze-like installation is part of a features in Sara's immersive exhibition celebrating the heritage, science, and worldview of the Sámi, the sole native group in Europe. Semi-nomadic, the Sámi count approximately 100,000 people spread across the Norwegian north, Finland, the Swedish Lapland, and the Kola region (an region they call Sápmi). They have endured oppression, integration policies, and repression of their dialect by all four states. With an emphasis on the reindeer, an animal at the core of the Sámi mythology and founding narrative, the work also spotlights the people's challenges associated with the global warming, property rights, and imperialism.

Symbolism in Materials

At the extended entry incline, there's a looming, 26-meter sculpture of pelts trapped by utility lines. It represents a metaphor for the political and economic systems limiting the Sámi. Part pylon, part heavenly staircase, this section of the artwork, titled Goavve-, points to the Sámi term for an harsh environmental condition, in which solid coatings of ice appear as changing temperatures liquefy and refreeze the snow, trapping the reindeers' primary winter sustenance, lichen. This phenomenon is a consequence of climate change, which is happening up to much more rapidly in the Far North than globally.

A few years back, I met with Sara in the Norwegian far north during a goavvi winter and went with Sámi pastoralists on their motorized sleds in chilly conditions as they transported carts of animal nutrition on to the exposed tundra to provide by hand. The herd surrounded round us, digging the icy ground in vain attempts for vegetative bits. This resource-intensive and demanding procedure is having a significant effect on reindeer husbandry—and on the animals' independence. But the alternative is death. As these icy periods become routine, reindeer are dying—some from hunger, others suffocating after sinking in water bodies through prematurely melting ice. To some extent, the art is a monument to them. "By overlapping of components, in a way I'm transporting the goavvi to London," says Sara.

Opposing Perspectives

The installation also highlights the sharp difference between the western understanding of electricity as a resource to be harnessed for economic benefit and existence and the Sámi philosophy of vitality as an innate essence in animals, humans, and nature. The gallery's history as a fossil fuel plant is linked with this, as is what the Sámi see as environmental exploitation by Nordic countries. In their efforts to be exemplars for renewable energy, Nordic nations have disagreed with the Sámi over the development of wind energy projects, water power facilities, and extraction sites on their traditional territory; the Sámi argue their legal protections, incomes, and culture are endangered. "It's hard being such a tiny group to defend yourself when the reasons are rooted in environmental protection," Sara observes. "Extractivism has appropriated the rhetoric of environmentalism, but nonetheless it's just striving to find alternative ways to persist in practices of use."

Family Struggles

Sara and her relatives have themselves conflicted with the national administration over its ever-stricter policies on animal husbandry. Previously, Sara's sibling embarked on a set of ultimately unsuccessful court actions over the required reduction of his livestock, ostensibly to stop overgrazing. In support, Sara created a extended series of creations named Pile O'Sápmi featuring a huge screen of four hundred cranial remains, which was exhibited at the 2017's art exhibition Documenta 14 and later obtained by the national institution, where it hangs in the entrance.

The Role of Art in Activism

For many Sámi, art is the only realm in which they can be heard by the global community. Two years ago, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|