Delving into this Scent of Apprehension: Máret Ánne Sara Transforms Tate's Turbine Hall with Arctic Deer Themed Exhibit

Visitors to the renowned gallery are familiar to unusual displays in its vast Turbine Hall. They've relaxed under an artificial sun, descended down helter skelters, and witnessed automated jellyfish drifting through the air. Yet this marks the initial time they will be engaging themselves in the complex nasal chambers of a reindeer. The latest artistic project for this cavernous space—created by Native Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—invites visitors into a maze-like construction modeled after the enlarged inside of a reindeer's nasal passages. Upon entering, they can wander around or relax on skins, tuning in on earphones to tribal seniors imparting tales and wisdom.

Focus on the Nasal Passages

Why choose the nasal structure? It might seem whimsical, but the artwork honors a little-known natural marvel: scientists have found that in under a second, the reindeer's nose can raise the temperature of the surrounding air it takes in by eighty degrees, allowing the animal to thrive in extreme Arctic climates. Enlarging the nose to human-scale dimensions, Sara notes, "generates a sense of smallness that you as a person are not dominant over nature." The artist is a former reporter, writer for kids, and land defender, who hails from a herding family in northern Norway. "Possibly that generates the possibility to alter your perspective or trigger some modesty," she continues.

A Tribute to Indigenous Heritage

The winding design is one of several elements in Sara's immersive commission celebrating the traditions, science, and beliefs of the Sámi, the continent's original inhabitants. Partially migratory, the Sámi number about 100,000 people ranged across northern Norway, Finland, the Swedish Lapland, and Russia's Kola Peninsula (an area they call Sápmi). They've experienced oppression, integration policies, and repression of their dialect by all four countries. By focusing on the reindeer, an animal at the heart of the Sámi cosmology and origin tale, the art also spotlights the people's challenges associated with the climate crisis, land dispossession, and external control.

Metaphor in Materials

Along the extended entry ramp, there's a soaring, 26-metre structure of skins trapped by utility lines. It represents a metaphor for the political and economic systems restricting the Sámi. Partly a utility pole, part celestial ladder, this part of the artwork, called Goavve-, points to the Sámi term for an harsh environmental condition, whereby solid coatings of ice form as changing conditions melt and ice over the snow, locking in the reindeers' main winter sustenance, fungus. This phenomenon is a outcome of global heating, which is occurring up to four times faster in the Arctic than globally.

Previously, I traveled to see Sara in the Norwegian far north during a goavvi winter and went with Sámi reindeer keepers on their Arctic vehicles in chilly conditions as they transported containers of animal nutrition on to the barren frozen landscape to distribute through labor. These animals gathered round us, scratching the frozen ground in vain attempts for mossy pieces. This costly and labour-intensive process is having a severe impact on animal rearing—and on the animals' self-sufficiency. But the alternative is starvation. As goavvi winters become routine, reindeer are succumbing—some from hunger, others suffocating after plunging into streams through thinning ice sheets. To some extent, the art is a memorial to them. "With the layering of components, in a way I'm bringing the phenomenon to London," says Sara.

Contrasting Perspectives

The sculpture also highlights the clear divergence between the industrial view of energy as a commodity to be harnessed for gain and survival and the Sámi philosophy of energy as an inherent power in creatures, individuals, and nature. This venue's history as a coal and oil power station is connected to this, as is what the Sámi view as environmental exploitation by Nordic countries. While attempting to be standard bearers for renewable energy, Scandinavian countries have locked horns with the Sámi over the construction of wind energy projects, river barriers, and digging operations on their native soil; the Sámi contend their legal protections, livelihoods, and culture are endangered. "It's very difficult being such a limited population to protect your rights when the arguments are based on environmental protection," Sara notes. "Resource exploitation has adopted the rhetoric of sustainability, but nonetheless it's just aiming to find alternative ways to maintain patterns of use."

Family Challenges

Sara and her family have themselves conflicted with the national administration over its ever-stricter regulations on reindeer management. In 2016, Sara's sibling undertook a series of finally failed lawsuits over the forced culling of his livestock, ostensibly to stop vegetation depletion. As a show of solidarity, Sara created a extended set of artworks called Pile O'Sápmi including a huge curtain of numerous reindeer skulls, which was displayed at the 2017's event Documenta 14 and later obtained by the national institution, where it resides in the entrance.

Art as Activism

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