Exploring the Aroma of Apprehension: The Sámi Artist Revamps The Gallery's Turbine Hall with Reindeer Themed Exhibit

Guests to Tate Modern are used to surprising displays in its vast Turbine Hall. They have relaxed under an man-made sun, slid down amusement rides, and observed robotic sea creatures hovering through the air. However this marks the first time they will be venturing themselves in the detailed nose chambers of a reindeer. The latest creative installation for this huge space—designed by Indigenous Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—welcomes patrons into a maze-like structure modeled after the enlarged inside of a reindeer's nasal passages. Once inside, they can wander around or chill out on pelts, listening on headphones to Sámi elders sharing narratives and knowledge.

The Significance of the Nose

Why the nose? It may seem quirky, but the exhibit pays tribute to a little-known scientific wonder: scientists have uncovered that in under a second, the reindeer's nose can warm the surrounding air it takes in by 80°C, helping the creature to thrive in harsh Arctic climates. Expanding the nose to human-scale dimensions, Sara explains, "creates a sense of inferiority that you as a human being are not in control over nature." She is a ex- journalist, writer for kids, and rights advocate, who comes from a reindeer-herding family in the Norwegian Arctic. "Perhaps that generates the chance to alter your outlook or spark some humility," she continues.

A Celebration to Traditional Ways

The labyrinthine design is one of several elements in Sara's engaging art project celebrating the traditions, science, and philosophy of the Sámi, Europe's only Indigenous people. Semi-nomadic, the Sámi total approximately 100,000 people spread across northern Norway, Finland, the Swedish Lapland, and Russia's Kola Peninsula (an area they call Sápmi). They have experienced persecution, forced assimilation, and suppression of their language by all four states. Through highlighting the reindeer, an animal at the center of the Sámi cosmology and creation story, the art also highlights the community's struggles associated with the climate crisis, loss of territory, and colonialism.

Metaphor in Materials

Along the extended access incline, there's a soaring, 26-meter structure of pelts ensnared by utility lines. It can be read as a analogy for the political and economic systems restricting the Sámi. Like an electrical tower, part spiritual ascent, this part of the exhibit, titled Goavve-, points to the Sámi word for an severe climatic event, wherein solid layers of ice appear as changing temperatures melt and refreeze the snow, encasing the reindeers' key winter nourishment, fungus. Goavvi is a consequence of climate change, which is taking place up to at an accelerated rate in the Far North than in other regions.

Three years ago, I visited Sara in the Norwegian far north during a icy season and went with Sámi reindeer keepers on their motorized sleds in freezing temperatures as they hauled carts of supplementary feed on to the wind-scoured tundra to dispense manually. These animals gathered round us, scratching the slippery ground in vain for lichen-covered bits. This expensive and demanding procedure is having a severe effect on reindeer husbandry—and on the animals' self-sufficiency. But the alternative is death. As these icy periods become routine, reindeer are perishing—a number from hunger, others drowning after plunging into water bodies through prematurely melting ice. To some extent, the installation is a tribute to them. "Through the stacking of elements, in a way I'm transporting the condition to London," says Sara.

Opposing Worldviews

The installation also emphasizes the clear difference between the modern understanding of electricity as a asset to be utilized for economic benefit and survival and the Sámi worldview of energy as an innate essence in animals, people, and land. This venue's legacy as a industrial facility is connected to this, as is what the Sámi see as environmental exploitation by Nordic countries. While attempting to be exemplars for renewable energy, Nordic nations have disagreed with the Sámi over the construction of windfarms, water power facilities, and extraction sites on their ancestral land; the Sámi argue their legal protections, ways of life, and traditions are threatened. "It's hard being such a tiny group to stand your ground when the justifications are rooted in environmental protection," Sara notes. "Resource exploitation has adopted the rhetoric of sustainability, but yet it's just aiming to find better ways to persist in patterns of consumption."

Personal Struggles

The artist and her kin have themselves disagreed with the national administration over its increasingly stringent rules on reindeer management. A few years ago, Sara's brother undertook a set of ultimately unsuccessful legal cases over the mandatory slaughter of his herd, apparently to stop overgrazing. To back him, Sara created a extended series of pieces called Pile O'Sápmi including a colossal screen of 400 cranial remains, which was exhibited at the 2017 event Documenta 14 and later purchased by the national institution, where it hangs in the entryway.

Creative Expression as Advocacy

For many Sámi, creative work appears the only sphere in which they can be listened to by the global community. In 2022, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|