Exploring the Smell of Apprehension: The Sámi Artist Revamps Tate's Turbine Hall with Arctic Deer Themed Exhibit

Visitors to Tate Modern are used to surprising encounters in its spacious Turbine Hall. They've relaxed under an artificial sun, slid down spiral slides, and observed AI-powered sea creatures floating through the air. However this marks the inaugural time they will be venturing themselves in the intricate nose chambers of a reindeer. The current artist commission for this cavernous space—created by Native Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—welcomes visitors into a winding structure inspired by the enlarged inside of a reindeer's nasal cavities. Upon entering, they can meander around or relax on pelts, listening on headphones to community leaders telling tales and insights.

Why the Nose?

Why choose the nasal structure? It might sound quirky, but the installation pays tribute to a obscure natural marvel: experts have uncovered that in under a second, the reindeer's nose can warm the surrounding air it takes in by eighty degrees, allowing the creature to endure in extreme Arctic temperatures. Scaling the nose to larger than human size, Sara notes, "generates a feeling of smallness that you as a individual are not in control over nature." The artist is a ex- writer, young adult author, and environmental activist, who hails from a pastoral family in the far north of Norway. "Maybe that fosters the possibility to change your perspective or evoke some humbleness," she continues.

An Homage to Traditional Ways

The maze-like structure is among various elements in Sara's engaging art project showcasing the culture, science, and worldview of the Sámi, the continent's original inhabitants. Traditionally mobile, the Sámi number roughly 100,000 people distributed across northern Norway, the Finnish Arctic, Sweden, and Russia's Kola Peninsula (an area they call Sápmi). They've endured persecution, cultural suppression, and eradication of their language by all four nations. Through highlighting the reindeer, an creature at the heart of the Sámi mythology and creation story, the art also draws attention to the group's challenges connected to the climate crisis, land dispossession, and colonialism.

Symbolism in Components

Along the extended entry incline, there's a towering, eighty-five-foot formation of pelts trapped by electrical wires. It represents a symbol for the societal frameworks constraining the Sámi. Part pylon, part celestial ladder, this section of the installation, named Goavve-, points to the Sámi word for an extreme weather phenomenon, in which dense coatings of ice form as changing conditions thaw and ice over the snow, encasing the reindeers' key winter sustenance, moss. The condition is a result of planetary warming, which is occurring up to four times faster in the Arctic than globally.

A few years back, I visited Sara in Guovdageaidnu during a severe cold period and accompanied Sámi reindeer keepers on their snowmobiles in freezing temperatures as they carried carts of supplementary feed on to the exposed Arctic plains to provide through labor. The herd surrounded round us, scratching the frozen ground in vain for vegetative pieces. This resource-intensive and demanding procedure is having a significant effect on reindeer husbandry—and on the animals' independence. Yet the alternative is starvation. When such conditions become routine, reindeer are succumbing—a number from starvation, others submerging after sinking in water bodies through prematurely melting ice. On one level, the art is a monument to them. "Through the stacking of components, in a way I'm transporting the phenomenon to London," says Sara.

Contrasting Perspectives

The sculpture also emphasizes the sharp divergence between the modern understanding of electricity as a commodity to be harnessed for economic benefit and livelihood and the Sámi outlook of life force as an innate essence in animals, individuals, and land. The gallery's past as a coal and oil power station is linked with this, as is what the Sámi consider environmental exploitation by Scandinavian states. As they strive to be exemplars for renewable energy, Scandinavian countries have clashed with the Sámi over the building of turbine fields, hydroelectric dams, and digging operations on their traditional territory; the Sámi contend their fundamental freedoms, ways of life, and culture are at risk. "It's very difficult being such a tiny group to stand your ground when the arguments are grounded in saving the world," Sara observes. "Extractivism has adopted the discourse of sustainability, but nonetheless it's just attempting to find alternative ways to maintain patterns of consumption."

Individual Conflicts

The artist and her relatives have themselves disagreed with the national administration over its tightening regulations on animal husbandry. In 2016, Sara's sibling embarked on a sequence of ultimately unsuccessful lawsuits over the forced culling of his animals, apparently to stop excessive feeding. In support, Sara produced a multi-year set of creations titled Pile O'Sápmi featuring a huge screen of four hundred animal bones, which was shown at the 2017's art exhibition Documenta 14 and later purchased by the National Museum of Oslo, where it hangs in the entryway.

Creative Expression as Advocacy

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