Unveiling the Aroma of Fear: Máret Ánne Sara Reimagines The Gallery's Turbine Hall with Arctic Deer Influenced Exhibit

Guests to Tate Modern are accustomed to unusual encounters in its vast Turbine Hall. They've relaxed under an artificial sun, slid down spiral slides, and observed robotic jellyfish floating through the air. But this marks the initial time they will be engaging themselves in the detailed nose cavities of a reindeer. The current creative installation for this huge space—designed by Indigenous Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—invites gallerygoers into a maze-like design based on the enlarged inside of a reindeer's nose airways. Inside, they can stroll around or chill out on skins, listening on earphones to Sámi elders sharing tales and insights.

Why the Nose?

Why choose the nasal structure? It could sound playful, but the artwork honors a rarely recognized biological feat: experts have found that in less than one second, the reindeer's nose can raise the temperature of the ambient air it inhales by 80°C, allowing the creature to thrive in inhospitable Arctic conditions. Enlarging the nose to human-scale dimensions, Sara notes, "creates a sense of inferiority that you as a human being are not in control over nature." She is a ex- reporter, writer for kids, and rights advocate, who comes from a herding family in the far north of Norway. "Perhaps that fosters the potential to shift your outlook or trigger some humility," she continues.

A Celebration to Traditional Ways

The labyrinthine structure is one of several elements in Sara's immersive exhibition celebrating the traditions, understanding, and philosophy of the Sámi, the continent's original inhabitants. Traditionally mobile, the Sámi count about 100,000 people spread across northern Norway, the Finnish Arctic, Sweden, and the Russian Arctic (an area they call Sápmi). They have endured oppression, integration policies, and suppression of their language by all four nations. By focusing on the reindeer, an creature at the center of the Sámi cosmology and origin tale, the installation also draws attention to the people's challenges relating to the global warming, land dispossession, and imperialism.

Symbolism in Components

On the lengthy access ramp, there's a soaring, 26-meter structure of pelts ensnared by power and light cables. It serves as a symbol for the governance and financial structures restricting the Sámi. Partly a utility pole, part spiritual ascent, this component of the exhibit, titled Goavve-, relates to the Sámi word for an harsh environmental condition, in which dense layers of ice appear as varying temperatures thaw and ice over the snow, encasing the reindeers' main cold-season food, lichen. The condition is a result of global heating, which is occurring up to much more rapidly in the Arctic than elsewhere.

Previously, I met with Sara in a remote town during a severe cold period and accompanied Sámi pastoralists on their Arctic vehicles in chilly conditions as they hauled carts of animal nutrition on to the wind-scoured frozen landscape to distribute by hand. These animals gathered round us, digging the icy ground in futility for mossy bits. This costly and labour-intensive method is having a significant effect on animal rearing—and on the animals' independence. But the other option is starvation. When such conditions become routine, reindeer are dying—a number from lack of food, others suffocating after sinking in water bodies through unstable frozen surfaces. In a sense, the installation is a tribute to them. "With the layering of materials, in a way I'm transporting the goavvi to London," says Sara.

Opposing Worldviews

This artwork also underscores the sharp divergence between the industrial understanding of energy as a asset to be utilized for profit and livelihood and the Sámi philosophy of vitality as an natural life force in animals, individuals, and the environment. This venue's history as a coal and oil power station is tied up in this, as is what the Sámi see as green colonialism by Nordic countries. As they strive to be standard bearers for clean sources, these states have disagreed with the Sámi over the building of turbine fields, water power facilities, and digging operations on their native soil; the Sámi contend their legal protections, livelihoods, and traditions are at risk. "It's very difficult being such a small minority to defend yourself when the reasons are based on environmental protection," Sara comments. "Extractivism has adopted the language of environmentalism, but nonetheless it's just aiming to find better ways to persist in patterns of expenditure."

Individual Conflicts

Sara and her family have personally disagreed with the Norwegian government over its ever-stricter regulations on reindeer management. In 2016, Sara's brother initiated a set of ultimately unsuccessful lawsuits over the mandatory slaughter of his animals, apparently to stop overgrazing. To back him, Sara produced a multi-year set of pieces called Pile O'Sápmi comprising a massive curtain of numerous reindeer skulls, which was shown at the the event Documenta 14 and later acquired by the national institution, where it resides in the lobby.

Art as Activism

For numerous Indigenous people, art seems the only realm in which they can be listened to by outsiders. Recently, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|