Delving into the Aroma of Apprehension: The Sámi Artist Reimagines Tate's Exhibition Space with Arctic Deer Themed Exhibit

Attendees to Tate Modern are familiar to surprising experiences in its vast Turbine Hall. They have basked under an simulated sun, descended down spiral slides, and observed AI-powered sea creatures hovering through the air. But this marks the initial time they will be engaging themselves in the complex nose chambers of a reindeer. The latest artist commission for this huge space—created by Indigenous Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—invites visitors into a labyrinthine design based on the enlarged interior of a reindeer's nasal passages. Inside, they can stroll around or unwind on pelts, tuning in on earphones to tribal seniors sharing stories and wisdom.

The Significance of the Nose

Why the nose? It may sound playful, but the installation pays tribute to a little-known scientific wonder: scientists have found that in under a second, the reindeer's nose can raise the temperature of the incoming air it inhales by 80 degrees celsius, allowing the creature to endure in harsh Arctic conditions. Enlarging the nose to human-scale dimensions, Sara notes, "generates a feeling of smallness that you as a individual are not dominant over nature." The artist is a ex- reporter, writer for kids, and land defender, who is from a herding family in northern Norway. "Possibly that generates the chance to alter your outlook or trigger some humility," she states.

An Homage to Indigenous Heritage

The maze-like design is part of a elements in Sara's engaging exhibition celebrating the heritage, knowledge, and philosophy of the Sámi, the sole native group in Europe. Semi-nomadic, the Sámi number about 100,000 people ranged across the Norwegian north, Finland, Sweden, and Russia's Kola Peninsula (an area they call Sápmi). They have endured persecution, forced assimilation, and eradication of their language by all four countries. With an emphasis on the reindeer, an animal at the heart of the Sámi belief system and creation story, the art also highlights the people's struggles associated with the global warming, property rights, and imperialism.

Metaphor in Components

On the long access ramp, there's a soaring, 26-metre sculpture of pelts ensnared by utility lines. It can be read as a metaphor for the political and economic systems restricting the Sámi. Partly a utility pole, part heavenly staircase, this section of the exhibit, named Goavve-, points to the Sámi word for an severe climatic event, whereby thick layers of ice form as fluctuating conditions liquefy and ice over the snow, encasing the reindeers' primary cold-season nourishment, moss. The condition is a consequence of global heating, which is happening up to at an accelerated rate in the Far North than in other regions.

A few years back, I traveled to see Sara in the Norwegian far north during a icy season and went with Sámi pastoralists on their snowmobiles in freezing temperatures as they hauled carts of animal nutrition on to the exposed frozen landscape to distribute by hand. The reindeer surrounded round us, pawing the frozen ground in vain for mossy morsels. This expensive and laborious method is having a significant impact on animal rearing—and on the animals' natural survival. However the other option is starvation. When such conditions become commonplace, reindeer are succumbing—some from hunger, others suffocating after sinking in lakes and rivers through prematurely melting ice. On one level, the art is a memorial to them. "Through the stacking of elements, in a way I'm transporting the condition to London," says Sara.

Opposing Belief Systems

This artwork also emphasizes the stark difference between the western understanding of electricity as a resource to be harnessed for gain and livelihood and the Sámi outlook of life force as an innate power in creatures, humans, and nature. Tate Modern's legacy as a fossil fuel plant is linked with this, as is what the Sámi see as environmental exploitation by Nordic countries. As they strive to be exemplars for sustainable power, these states have disagreed with the Sámi over the development of wind energy projects, river barriers, and mines on their ancestral land; the Sámi assert their human rights, ways of life, and traditions are endangered. "It's challenging being such a tiny group to stand your ground when the arguments are based on global sustainability," Sara notes. "Resource exploitation has adopted the discourse of ecology, but still it's just aiming to find more suitable ways to persist in patterns of expenditure."

Individual Struggles

The artist and her relatives have themselves clashed with the state authorities over its tightening regulations on animal husbandry. Previously, Sara's sibling undertook a series of finally failed court actions over the required reduction of his livestock, supposedly to stop overgrazing. As a show of solidarity, Sara created a four-year series of artworks called Pile O'Sápmi comprising a huge drape of four hundred cranial remains, which was exhibited at the 2017 event Documenta 14 and later obtained by the National Museum of Oslo, where it is displayed in the entrance.

Art as Awareness

For many Sámi, visual expression is the sole domain in which they can be understood by the global community. Recently, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|