Unveiling this Smell of Anxiety: The Sámi Artist Revamps Tate's Exhibition Space with Arctic Deer Inspired Artwork

Visitors to Tate Modern are familiar to unusual displays in its expansive Turbine Hall. They've relaxed under an artificial sun, glided down amusement rides, and witnessed automated sea creatures floating through the air. But this marks the inaugural time they will be venturing themselves in the complex nasal chambers of a reindeer. The current artist commission for this cavernous space—created by Native Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—invites patrons into a labyrinthine design inspired by the scaled-up interior of a reindeer's nose cavities. Once inside, they can stroll around or chill out on skins, listening on headphones to tribal seniors imparting narratives and insights.

Focus on the Nasal Passages

Why choose the nasal structure? It could sound playful, but the artwork honors a rarely recognized biological feat: researchers have found that in less than one second, the reindeer's nose can raise the temperature of the ambient air it breathes in by eighty degrees, enabling the animal to survive in inhospitable Arctic temperatures. Scaling the nose to larger than human size, Sara says, "creates a sense of smallness that you as a human being are not in control over nature." She is a former writer, children's author, and land defender, who comes from a pastoral family in the far north of Norway. "Perhaps that fosters the possibility to alter your outlook or spark some humbleness," she continues.

An Homage to Indigenous Heritage

The winding installation is among various components in Sara's engaging art project honoring the culture, understanding, and beliefs of the Sámi, the continent's original inhabitants. Traditionally mobile, the Sámi count about 100,000 people spread across the Norwegian north, the Finnish Arctic, the Swedish Lapland, and Russia's Kola Peninsula (an region they call Sápmi). They've experienced discrimination, integration policies, and eradication of their tongue by all four states. With an emphasis on the reindeer, an creature at the core of the Sámi belief system and creation story, the work also highlights the community's issues connected to the environmental emergency, loss of territory, and external control.

Metaphor in Elements

Along the lengthy access incline, there's a soaring, 26-meter structure of reindeer hides trapped by electrical wires. It represents a metaphor for the governance and financial structures limiting the Sámi. Like an electrical tower, part heavenly staircase, this component of the exhibit, called Goavve-, relates to the Sámi name for an severe climatic event, in which dense layers of ice form as fluctuating temperatures melt and refreeze the snow, locking in the reindeers' key cold-season sustenance, fungus. The condition is a consequence of climate change, which is taking place up to four times faster in the Far North than globally.

Previously, I met with Sara in a remote town during a goavvi winter and went with Sámi herders on their motorized sleds in chilly conditions as they carried trailers of food pellets on to the exposed frozen landscape to provide manually. The reindeer gathered round us, scratching the frozen ground in vain attempts for lichen-covered morsels. This costly and labour-intensive procedure is having a significant effect on animal rearing—and on the animals' self-sufficiency. However the choice is starvation. As these icy periods become routine, reindeer are dying—a number from lack of food, others suffocating after sinking in water bodies through prematurely melting ice. On one level, the work is a memorial to them. "Through the stacking of materials, in a way I'm transporting the goavvi to London," says Sara.

Opposing Worldviews

The sculpture also emphasizes the stark contrast between the industrial interpretation of electricity as a commodity to be harnessed for gain and existence and the Sámi worldview of life force as an inherent life force in creatures, humans, and the environment. This venue's history as a industrial facility is tied up in this, as is what the Sámi see as green colonialism by Nordic countries. While attempting to be exemplars for clean sources, Scandinavian countries have disagreed with the Sámi over the development of wind energy projects, water power facilities, and mines on their native soil; the Sámi assert their legal protections, livelihoods, and traditions are endangered. "It's hard being such a small minority to stand your ground when the arguments are based on global sustainability," Sara comments. "Resource exploitation has adopted the language of sustainability, but yet it's just attempting to find better ways to maintain habits of expenditure."

Personal Challenges

The artist and her family have personally clashed with the state authorities over its ever-stricter policies on reindeer management. Previously, Sara's brother embarked on a series of finally failed legal cases over the mandatory slaughter of his animals, ostensibly to stop excessive feeding. To back him, Sara developed a extended collection of pieces named Pile O'Sápmi featuring a massive drape of 400 reindeer skulls, which was shown at the 2017's show Documenta 14 and later purchased by the national institution, where it is displayed in the entryway.

Creative Expression as Advocacy

Among the community, art seems the only sphere in which they can be listened to by people of other nations. Two years ago, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|