Delving into this Aroma of Fear: The Sámi Artist Reimagines The Gallery's Exhibition Space with Arctic Deer Themed Installation

Guests to the renowned gallery are accustomed to unusual displays in its vast Turbine Hall. They've basked under an man-made sun, descended down spiral slides, and witnessed automated sea creatures hovering through the air. However this marks the initial time they will be immersing themselves in the detailed nasal cavities of a reindeer. The newest artist commission for this cavernous space—designed by Indigenous Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—invites visitors into a labyrinthine structure modeled after the scaled-up inside of a reindeer's nose airways. Upon entering, they can meander around or unwind on pelts, tuning in on headphones to Sámi elders telling tales and knowledge.

Focus on the Nasal Passages

Why the nose? It could appear quirky, but the artwork celebrates a obscure natural marvel: scientists have uncovered that in under a second, the reindeer's nose can heat the surrounding air it takes in by 80°C, enabling the creature to thrive in inhospitable Arctic climates. Scaling the nose to bigger than a person, Sara explains, "produces a perception of inferiority that you as a person are not superior over nature." Sara is a former writer, writer for kids, and land defender, who is from a reindeer-herding family in the Norwegian Arctic. "Possibly that creates the possibility to shift your viewpoint or spark some humility," she adds.

A Celebration to Indigenous Heritage

The maze-like design is part of a components in Sara's absorbing commission honoring the culture, understanding, and philosophy of the Sámi, the continent's original inhabitants. Traditionally mobile, the Sámi number roughly 100,000 people spread across northern Norway, the Finnish Arctic, Sweden, and the Kola region (an territory they call Sápmi). They have endured discrimination, forced assimilation, and eradication of their language by all four nations. Through highlighting the reindeer, an animal at the center of the Sámi belief system and founding narrative, the work also highlights the community's struggles connected to the climate crisis, land dispossession, and external control.

Meaning in Elements

At the long entrance incline, there's a soaring, 26-meter sculpture of skins ensnared by electrical wires. It represents a analogy for the governance and financial structures constraining the Sámi. Part pylon, part spiritual ascent, this section of the exhibit, named Goavve-, points to the Sámi word for an harsh environmental condition, whereby thick coatings of ice form as fluctuating temperatures thaw and ice over the snow, encasing the reindeers' primary cold-season nourishment, lichen. This phenomenon is a result of planetary warming, which is occurring up to much more rapidly in the Far North than in other regions.

Three years ago, I met with Sara in Guovdageaidnu during a severe cold period and went with Sámi reindeer keepers on their Arctic vehicles in chilly conditions as they transported containers of food pellets on to the exposed frozen landscape to provide manually. The reindeer surrounded round us, scratching the icy ground in futility for mossy pieces. This expensive and laborious method is having a drastic impact on herding practices—and on the animals' natural survival. However the other option is starvation. As goavvi winters become commonplace, reindeer are dying—some from starvation, others submerging after falling into lakes and rivers through unstable frozen surfaces. To some extent, the installation is a tribute to them. "Through the stacking of elements, in a way I'm bringing the goavvi to London," says Sara.

Opposing Worldviews

The sculpture also emphasizes the clear contrast between the western understanding of electricity as a commodity to be utilized for profit and survival and the Sámi outlook of life force as an inherent life force in creatures, humans, and nature. Tate Modern's past as a industrial facility is linked with this, as is what the Sámi see as green colonialism by Nordic countries. While attempting to be exemplars for sustainable power, Nordic nations have clashed with the Sámi over the construction of turbine fields, river barriers, and extraction sites on their native soil; the Sámi assert their legal protections, ways of life, and traditions are at risk. "It's hard being such a tiny group to defend yourself when the arguments are rooted in saving the world," Sara notes. "Resource exploitation has appropriated the rhetoric of environmentalism, but yet it's just striving to find more suitable ways to maintain patterns of use."

Individual Challenges

She and her kin have themselves disagreed with the national administration over its ever-stricter regulations on herding. A few years ago, Sara's sibling embarked on a sequence of finally failed court actions over the forced culling of his livestock, supposedly to stop overgrazing. As a show of solidarity, Sara created a multi-year set of creations called Pile O'Sápmi featuring a massive drape of numerous reindeer skulls, which was displayed at the 2017 event Documenta 14 and later acquired by the national institution, where it resides in the entryway.

Creative Expression as Activism

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