Unveiling the Scent of Fear: The Sámi Artist Transforms The Gallery's Turbine Hall with Reindeer Inspired Artwork

Guests to Tate Modern are accustomed to surprising encounters in its expansive Turbine Hall. They have sunbathed under an simulated sun, glided down amusement rides, and witnessed robotic sea creatures hovering through the air. But this marks the initial time they will be venturing themselves in the complex nose cavities of a reindeer. The latest creative installation for this cavernous space—created by Native Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—invites visitors into a maze-like construction based on the expanded interior of a reindeer's nasal passages. Inside, they can wander around or unwind on pelts, tuning in on headphones to tribal seniors sharing tales and knowledge.

The Significance of the Nose

Why the nose? It may sound playful, but the artwork celebrates a rarely recognized natural marvel: scientists have found that in a fraction of a second, the reindeer's nose can raise the temperature of the surrounding air it inhales by eighty degrees, allowing the creature to thrive in harsh Arctic climates. Enlarging the nose to human-scale dimensions, Sara explains, "creates a feeling of inferiority that you as a human being are not in control over nature." The artist is a ex- writer, children's author, and land defender, who is from a herding family in the Norwegian Arctic. "Maybe that fosters the possibility to alter your viewpoint or trigger some humility," she continues.

An Homage to Sámi Culture

The winding design is among various features in Sara's absorbing exhibition honoring the traditions, understanding, and worldview of the Sámi, the sole native group in Europe. Semi-nomadic, the Sámi total about 100,000 people ranged across the Norwegian north, the Finnish Arctic, the Swedish Lapland, and Russia's Kola Peninsula (an territory they call Sápmi). They have experienced oppression, cultural suppression, and repression of their tongue by all four states. By focusing on the reindeer, an creature at the heart of the Sámi belief system and founding narrative, the work also draws attention to the people's struggles connected to the global warming, land dispossession, and external control.

Metaphor in Components

At the long entry slope, there's a soaring, eighty-five-foot sculpture of pelts ensnared by power and light cables. It represents a analogy for the governance and financial structures restricting the Sámi. Part pylon, part spiritual ascent, this section of the exhibit, called Goavve-, refers to the Sámi name for an extreme weather phenomenon, whereby thick coatings of ice appear as varying conditions melt and refreeze the snow, trapping the reindeers' key winter sustenance, moss. This phenomenon is a consequence of global heating, which is taking place up to four times faster in the Far North than in other regions.

Three years ago, I visited Sara in the Norwegian far north during a goavvi winter and joined Sámi herders on their snowmobiles in chilly conditions as they transported trailers of food pellets on to the barren frozen landscape to provide through labor. These animals crowded round us, scratching the frozen ground in futility for mossy morsels. This resource-intensive and laborious procedure is having a drastic effect on reindeer husbandry—and on the animals' natural survival. However the alternative is malnutrition. As goavvi winters become frequent, reindeer are dying—a number from lack of food, others suffocating after sinking in water bodies through thinning ice sheets. On one level, the installation is a monument to them. "With the layering of materials, in a way I'm bringing the condition to London," says Sara.

Opposing Belief Systems

The sculpture also highlights the clear divergence between the western view of power as a resource to be utilized for profit and livelihood and the Sámi outlook of life force as an inherent life force in creatures, humans, and land. The gallery's past as a coal and oil power station is connected to this, as is what the Sámi consider green colonialism by Nordic countries. In their efforts to be standard bearers for renewable energy, Scandinavian countries have disagreed with the Sámi over the building of windfarms, hydroelectric dams, and mines on their traditional territory; the Sámi argue their fundamental freedoms, ways of life, and way of life are threatened. "It's challenging being such a small minority to stand your ground when the justifications are rooted in saving the world," Sara comments. "Resource exploitation has adopted the language of environmentalism, but nonetheless it's just striving to find more suitable ways to continue habits of use."

Individual Struggles

The artist and her kin have themselves disagreed with the state authorities over its ever-stricter rules on animal husbandry. Previously, Sara's brother embarked on a sequence of finally failed court actions over the mandatory slaughter of his herd, apparently to stop excessive feeding. In support, Sara created a extended collection of artworks called Pile O'Sápmi including a colossal drape of four hundred cranial remains, which was exhibited at the 2017's show Documenta 14 and later obtained by the National Museum of Oslo, where it hangs in the entrance.

Creative Expression as Awareness

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