Unveiling this Aroma of Apprehension: Máret Ánne Sara Revamps Tate's Exhibition Space with Reindeer Inspired Artwork

Guests to Tate Modern are accustomed to unexpected encounters in its vast Turbine Hall. They've relaxed under an man-made sun, glided down helter skelters, and observed AI-powered sea creatures hovering through the air. Yet this marks the initial time they will be engaging themselves in the complex nose chambers of a reindeer. The current creative installation for this cavernous space—developed by Indigenous Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—encourages visitors into a winding construction based on the enlarged inside of a reindeer's nasal airways. Inside, they can meander around or relax on pelts, tuning in on earphones to Sámi elders imparting stories and wisdom.

The Significance of the Nose

What's the focus on the nose? It might appear quirky, but the exhibit pays tribute to a rarely recognized natural marvel: scientists have found that in under a second, the reindeer's nose can warm the incoming air it takes in by eighty degrees, enabling the animal to endure in extreme Arctic temperatures. Scaling the nose to human-scale dimensions, Sara notes, "generates a perception of insignificance that you as a human being are not superior over nature." Sara is a former reporter, children's author, and land defender, who hails from a reindeer-herding family in the Norwegian Arctic. "Maybe that fosters the possibility to shift your viewpoint or spark some humility," she adds.

An Homage to Traditional Ways

The maze-like structure is one of several elements in Sara's immersive art project honoring the traditions, understanding, and worldview of the Sámi, Europe's only Indigenous people. Partially migratory, the Sámi count about 100,000 people spread across the Norwegian north, the Finnish Arctic, the Swedish Lapland, and the Kola region (an area they call Sápmi). They have experienced oppression, cultural suppression, and repression of their dialect by all four states. With an emphasis on the reindeer, an creature at the center of the Sámi cosmology and creation story, the installation also spotlights the community's issues connected to the climate crisis, land dispossession, and external control.

Metaphor in Elements

Along the lengthy entrance ramp, there's a towering, 26-metre formation of reindeer hides ensnared by utility lines. It serves as a analogy for the political and economic systems restricting the Sámi. Part pylon, part celestial ladder, this component of the artwork, named Goavve-, points to the Sámi term for an extreme weather phenomenon, whereby thick coatings of ice appear as fluctuating conditions thaw and refreeze the snow, trapping the reindeers' primary cold-season food, fungus. Goavvi is a outcome of climate change, which is happening up to four times faster in the Polar region than globally.

Previously, I traveled to see Sara in the Norwegian far north during a goavvi winter and went with Sámi pastoralists on their motorized sleds in biting cold as they carried trailers of food pellets on to the barren frozen landscape to distribute through labor. These animals crowded round us, digging the icy ground in vain for mossy bits. This expensive and laborious process is having a drastic impact on reindeer husbandry—and on the animals' independence. However the other option is starvation. When such conditions become routine, reindeer are perishing—some from starvation, others drowning after falling into water bodies through thinning ice sheets. In a sense, the art is a memorial to them. "Through the stacking of materials, in a way I'm introducing the phenomenon to London," says Sara.

Opposing Perspectives

This artwork also highlights the stark contrast between the western interpretation of energy as a commodity to be exploited for economic benefit and livelihood and the Sámi worldview of energy as an natural power in creatures, people, and land. Tate Modern's history as a fossil fuel plant is tied up in this, as is what the Sámi consider green colonialism by Nordic countries. While attempting to be standard bearers for sustainable power, Nordic nations have clashed with the Sámi over the development of wind energy projects, water power facilities, and extraction sites on their traditional territory; the Sámi argue their fundamental freedoms, incomes, and culture are threatened. "It's very difficult being such a limited population to defend yourself when the arguments are grounded in environmental protection," Sara comments. "Extractivism has adopted the language of sustainability, but yet it's just attempting to find better ways to persist in habits of use."

Individual Conflicts

She and her relatives have personally conflicted with the national administration over its ever-stricter policies on reindeer management. A few years ago, Sara's sibling embarked on a series of unsuccessful lawsuits over the mandatory slaughter of his herd, supposedly to stop overgrazing. As a show of solidarity, Sara produced a four-year set of artworks called Pile O'Sápmi comprising a huge drape of numerous cranial remains, which was exhibited at the the event Documenta 14 and later obtained by the public gallery, where it is displayed in the entryway.

Art as Advocacy

For numerous Indigenous people, visual expression seems the sole domain in which they can be heard by people of other nations. Two years ago, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|