Exploring the Smell of Fear: The Sámi Artist Revamps Tate's Exhibition Space with Reindeer Themed Artwork

Attendees to Tate Modern are familiar to unusual experiences in its spacious Turbine Hall. They've basked under an simulated sun, slid down amusement rides, and seen AI-powered jellyfish hovering through the air. But this marks the first time they will be immersing themselves in the complex nose passages of a reindeer. The latest artist commission for this huge space—designed by Native Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—welcomes gallerygoers into a winding construction based on the enlarged inside of a reindeer's nasal airways. Upon entering, they can wander around or relax on reindeer hides, listening on earphones to community leaders sharing stories and wisdom.

Why the Nose?

What's the focus on the nose? It may sound whimsical, but the installation honors a rarely recognized scientific wonder: experts have discovered that in a fraction of a second, the reindeer's nose can heat the surrounding air it breathes in by 80 degrees celsius, helping the creature to endure in extreme Arctic temperatures. Expanding the nose to bigger than a person, Sara notes, "creates a sense of smallness that you as a individual are not superior over nature." The artist is a ex- writer, writer for kids, and land defender, who comes from a pastoral family in the far north of Norway. "Possibly that fosters the potential to change your outlook or evoke some humility," she states.

A Celebration to Traditional Ways

The winding installation is among various components in Sara's immersive art project honoring the culture, knowledge, and philosophy of the Sámi, Europe's only Indigenous people. Semi-nomadic, the Sámi total approximately 100,000 people ranged across the Norwegian north, the Finnish Arctic, Sweden, and the Russian Arctic (an region they call Sápmi). They have endured oppression, integration policies, and repression of their language by all four states. Through highlighting the reindeer, an creature at the core of the Sámi mythology and founding narrative, the art also spotlights the community's struggles associated with the environmental emergency, property rights, and external control.

Meaning in Materials

On the lengthy entry slope, there's a soaring, eighty-five-foot formation of reindeer hides entangled by utility lines. It serves as a symbol for the societal frameworks restricting the Sámi. Partly a utility pole, part celestial ladder, this component of the artwork, called Goavve-, points to the Sámi term for an harsh environmental condition, whereby dense coatings of ice develop as changing weather melt and solidify again the snow, trapping the reindeers' main cold-season nourishment, fungus. Goavvi is a outcome of climate change, which is taking place up to four times faster in the Polar region than elsewhere.

Three years ago, I met with Sara in a remote town during a icy season and accompanied Sámi herders on their snowmobiles in biting cold as they transported containers of supplementary feed on to the exposed Arctic plains to dispense through labor. The herd gathered round us, digging the frozen ground in vain for lichen-covered bits. This costly and demanding process is having a drastic effect on animal rearing—and on the animals' natural survival. However the other option is malnutrition. As goavvi winters become commonplace, reindeer are dying—a number from starvation, others suffocating after plunging into water bodies through thinning ice sheets. On one level, the work is a monument to them. "With the layering of elements, in a way I'm introducing the phenomenon to London," says Sara.

Contrasting Belief Systems

The sculpture also emphasizes the clear difference between the western understanding of energy as a commodity to be harnessed for gain and livelihood and the Sámi outlook of vitality as an inherent essence in animals, individuals, and the environment. Tate Modern's history as a industrial facility is linked with this, as is what the Sámi see as green colonialism by Nordic countries. While attempting to be standard bearers for renewable energy, Nordic nations have clashed with the Sámi over the development of windfarms, hydroelectric dams, and extraction sites on their ancestral land; the Sámi argue their human rights, incomes, and way of life are at risk. "It's hard being such a limited population to defend yourself when the arguments are based on saving the world," Sara observes. "Mining practices has co-opted the rhetoric of environmentalism, but nonetheless it's just attempting to find alternative ways to maintain habits of expenditure."

Family Struggles

She and her family have themselves disagreed with the state authorities over its ever-stricter rules on animal husbandry. In 2016, Sara's sibling embarked on a sequence of unsuccessful legal cases over the forced culling of his animals, supposedly to stop vegetation depletion. In support, Sara produced a extended collection of creations named Pile O'Sápmi comprising a massive drape of numerous reindeer skulls, which was shown at the 2017 event Documenta 14 and later purchased by the national institution, where it resides in the lobby.

The Role of Art in Awareness

For numerous Indigenous people, creative work appears the sole sphere in which they can be heard by the global community. In 2022, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|