Delving into this Aroma of Fear: Máret Ánne Sara Revamps The Gallery's Exhibition Space with Reindeer Inspired Installation

Attendees to Tate Modern are familiar to unusual experiences in its expansive Turbine Hall. They have basked under an man-made sun, slid down spiral slides, and observed robotic sea creatures floating through the air. But this marks the inaugural time they will be engaging themselves in the detailed nasal chambers of a reindeer. The newest creative installation for this immense space—created by Native Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—invites patrons into a winding structure inspired by the scaled-up interior of a reindeer's nasal cavities. Inside, they can stroll around or relax on skins, tuning in on earphones to Sámi elders imparting stories and insights.

Why the Nose?

What's the focus on the nose? It could seem quirky, but the installation celebrates a little-known biological feat: experts have discovered that in a fraction of a second, the reindeer's nose can warm the surrounding air it takes in by 80 degrees celsius, enabling the creature to endure in harsh Arctic climates. Expanding the nose to bigger than a person, Sara says, "creates a sense of inferiority that you as a person are not dominant over nature." The artist is a former journalist, writer for kids, and land defender, who is from a herding family in the far north of Norway. "Perhaps that creates the potential to change your perspective or evoke some modesty," she adds.

A Tribute to Traditional Ways

The winding design is among various elements in Sara's absorbing art project honoring the heritage, understanding, and philosophy of the Sámi, the continent's original inhabitants. Partially migratory, the Sámi count approximately 100,000 people ranged across the Norwegian north, Finland, Sweden, and the Kola region (an territory they call Sápmi). They have faced oppression, cultural suppression, and suppression of their tongue by all four nations. With an emphasis on the reindeer, an creature at the center of the Sámi mythology and founding narrative, the art also spotlights the people's challenges associated with the environmental emergency, land dispossession, and external control.

Metaphor in Components

Along the long entrance slope, there's a looming, eighty-five-foot sculpture of skins entangled by electrical wires. It serves as a analogy for the governance and financial structures restricting the Sámi. Like an electrical tower, part celestial ladder, this part of the exhibit, called Goavve-, points to the Sámi word for an extreme weather phenomenon, in which dense sheets of ice appear as changing temperatures liquefy and solidify again the snow, encasing the reindeers' primary winter sustenance, moss. Goavvi is a consequence of global heating, which is taking place up to much more rapidly in the Polar region than in other regions.

Previously, I visited Sara in the Norwegian far north during a goavvi winter and joined Sámi reindeer keepers on their snowmobiles in chilly conditions as they transported containers of food pellets on to the wind-scoured frozen landscape to provide manually. The reindeer crowded round us, scratching the frozen ground in futility for mossy morsels. This resource-intensive and laborious procedure is having a severe influence on animal rearing—and on the animals' self-sufficiency. However the choice is starvation. As these icy periods become routine, reindeer are succumbing—a number from starvation, others submerging after sinking in lakes and rivers through unstable frozen surfaces. In a sense, the art is a memorial to them. "With the layering of components, in a way I'm bringing the phenomenon to London," says Sara.

Opposing Perspectives

The sculpture also emphasizes the sharp contrast between the industrial view of energy as a resource to be utilized for profit and existence and the Sámi outlook of life force as an natural power in animals, humans, and the environment. This venue's past as a coal and oil power station is connected to this, as is what the Sámi see as eco-imperialism by Scandinavian states. While attempting to be leaders for sustainable power, Scandinavian countries have disagreed with the Sámi over the building of wind energy projects, water power facilities, and mines on their native soil; the Sámi argue their legal protections, incomes, and traditions are endangered. "It's challenging being such a small minority to protect your rights when the reasons are grounded in global sustainability," Sara observes. "Resource exploitation has co-opted the rhetoric of sustainability, but nonetheless it's just striving to find better ways to continue patterns of use."

Family Challenges

She and her relatives have themselves disagreed with the state authorities over its ever-stricter rules on herding. In 2016, Sara's brother initiated a sequence of unsuccessful lawsuits over the mandatory slaughter of his livestock, apparently to stop overgrazing. In support, Sara produced a four-year series of creations called Pile O'Sápmi including a colossal drape of 400 reindeer skulls, which was exhibited at the the art exhibition Documenta 14 and later purchased by the public gallery, where it resides in the entryway.

The Role of Art in Activism

For numerous Indigenous people, visual expression seems the exclusive sphere in which they can be heard by outsiders. Recently, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|