Exploring the Smell of Apprehension: The Sámi Artist Reimagines The Gallery's Turbine Hall with Reindeer Themed Artwork

Visitors to Tate Modern are used to surprising encounters in its spacious Turbine Hall. They have relaxed under an man-made sun, glided down spiral slides, and observed robotic jellyfish drifting through the air. Yet this marks the initial time they will be immersing themselves in the complex nose cavities of a reindeer. The current artist commission for this cavernous space—created by Indigenous Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—welcomes visitors into a winding structure based on the enlarged inside of a reindeer's nasal cavities. Inside, they can stroll around or chill out on reindeer hides, listening on earphones to tribal seniors imparting narratives and knowledge.

The Significance of the Nose

Why choose the nasal structure? It might appear whimsical, but the installation celebrates a obscure biological feat: researchers have found that in under a second, the reindeer's nose can raise the temperature of the incoming air it breathes in by 80°C, allowing the creature to endure in extreme Arctic climates. Scaling the nose to human-scale dimensions, Sara says, "generates a perception of insignificance that you as a person are not dominant over nature." Sara is a ex- reporter, young adult author, and environmental activist, who hails from a reindeer-herding family in northern Norway. "Maybe that generates the chance to alter your outlook or spark some humbleness," she states.

A Celebration to Traditional Ways

The labyrinthine structure is part of a features in Sara's absorbing commission celebrating the heritage, knowledge, and beliefs of the Sámi, the sole native group in Europe. Traditionally mobile, the Sámi total roughly 100,000 people spread across northern Norway, Finland, Sweden, and the Kola region (an region they call Sápmi). They've endured persecution, integration policies, and repression of their dialect by all four states. With an emphasis on the reindeer, an creature at the core of the Sámi cosmology and founding narrative, the art also spotlights the community's issues associated with the environmental emergency, property rights, and colonialism.

Symbolism in Components

At the long access ramp, there's a towering, 26-metre structure of reindeer hides ensnared by utility lines. It represents a metaphor for the societal frameworks constraining the Sámi. Partly a utility pole, part celestial ladder, this part of the installation, named Goavve-, refers to the Sámi term for an extreme weather phenomenon, wherein solid layers of ice appear as fluctuating conditions melt and solidify again the snow, encasing the reindeers' main winter food, moss. This phenomenon is a consequence of planetary warming, which is taking place up to at an accelerated rate in the Far North than in other regions.

Previously, I visited Sara in the Norwegian far north during a goavvi winter and accompanied Sámi pastoralists on their snowmobiles in chilly conditions as they carried containers of supplementary feed on to the exposed Arctic plains to provide through labor. The herd surrounded round us, pawing the slippery ground in vain attempts for lichen-covered pieces. This resource-intensive and labour-intensive method is having a significant effect on reindeer husbandry—and on the animals' self-sufficiency. However the other option is malnutrition. When such conditions become routine, reindeer are dying—some from starvation, others submerging after falling into lakes and rivers through prematurely melting ice. In a sense, the art is a memorial to them. "By overlapping of components, in a way I'm bringing the goavvi to London," says Sara.

Diverging Perspectives

The sculpture also highlights the clear contrast between the modern interpretation of energy as a commodity to be harnessed for economic benefit and survival and the Sámi philosophy of vitality as an innate power in animals, individuals, and land. Tate Modern's past as a industrial facility is connected to this, as is what the Sámi view as eco-imperialism by Scandinavian states. While attempting to be leaders for clean sources, Nordic nations have locked horns with the Sámi over the construction of windfarms, river barriers, and digging operations on their ancestral land; the Sámi assert their legal protections, incomes, and culture are at risk. "It's hard being such a tiny group to defend yourself when the reasons are rooted in saving the world," Sara observes. "Extractivism has appropriated the rhetoric of sustainability, but nonetheless it's just striving to find more suitable ways to continue habits of expenditure."

Family Conflicts

Sara and her family have themselves clashed with the state authorities over its ever-stricter rules on animal husbandry. A few years ago, Sara's sibling embarked on a sequence of unsuccessful lawsuits over the mandatory slaughter of his animals, apparently to stop overgrazing. To back him, Sara created a four-year set of pieces named Pile O'Sápmi featuring a massive screen of numerous cranial remains, which was shown at the 2017 art exhibition Documenta 14 and later purchased by the National Museum of Oslo, where it hangs in the lobby.

The Role of Art in Activism

For many Sámi, creative work appears the sole sphere in which they can be understood by people of other nations. In 2022, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|