Delving into this Aroma of Anxiety: The Sámi Artist Transforms The Gallery's Turbine Hall with Reindeer Inspired Installation

Attendees to Tate Modern are familiar to unexpected experiences in its spacious Turbine Hall. They've relaxed under an simulated sun, glided down helter skelters, and witnessed robotic sea creatures floating through the air. But this marks the first time they will be immersing themselves in the complex nasal passages of a reindeer. The latest artist commission for this huge space—developed by Indigenous Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—invites patrons into a labyrinthine structure based on the scaled-up interior of a reindeer's nasal cavities. Inside, they can wander around or unwind on pelts, listening on earphones to Sámi elders telling tales and insights.

The Significance of the Nose

What's the focus on the nose? It may seem playful, but the artwork celebrates a rarely recognized scientific wonder: researchers have uncovered that in under a second, the reindeer's nose can warm the ambient air it takes in by 80 degrees celsius, allowing the animal to endure in extreme Arctic conditions. Scaling the nose to bigger than a person, Sara notes, "generates a perception of smallness that you as a individual are not superior over nature." The artist is a ex- writer, young adult author, and environmental activist, who hails from a pastoral family in northern Norway. "Maybe that generates the chance to alter your perspective or spark some modesty," she states.

A Tribute to Indigenous Heritage

The labyrinthine installation is part of a components in Sara's immersive commission showcasing the heritage, knowledge, and beliefs of the Sámi, Europe's only Indigenous people. Partially migratory, the Sámi total about 100,000 people spread across the Norwegian north, Finland, the Swedish Lapland, and the Russian Arctic (an region they call Sápmi). They've endured discrimination, forced assimilation, and suppression of their dialect by all four states. By focusing on the reindeer, an animal at the heart of the Sámi mythology and creation story, the work also spotlights the group's issues associated with the climate crisis, land dispossession, and imperialism.

Metaphor in Elements

On the lengthy access ramp, there's a looming, 26-metre sculpture of skins entangled by utility lines. It can be read as a analogy for the governance and financial structures limiting the Sámi. Part pylon, part spiritual ascent, this section of the exhibit, titled Goavve-, points to the Sámi term for an severe climatic event, whereby thick coatings of ice develop as fluctuating weather thaw and solidify again the snow, locking in the reindeers' primary cold-season nourishment, lichen. Goavvi is a outcome of planetary warming, which is happening up to much more rapidly in the Arctic than elsewhere.

A few years back, I met with Sara in a remote town during a goavvi winter and went with Sámi pastoralists on their Arctic vehicles in chilly conditions as they carried trailers of animal nutrition on to the barren frozen landscape to provide manually. The reindeer gathered round us, digging the frozen ground in futility for vegetative pieces. This resource-intensive and laborious method is having a drastic influence on reindeer husbandry—and on the animals' independence. However the choice is starvation. When such conditions become frequent, reindeer are perishing—a number from lack of food, others submerging after plunging into streams through unstable frozen surfaces. In a sense, the art is a tribute to them. "Through the stacking of materials, in a way I'm transporting the phenomenon to London," says Sara.

Diverging Worldviews

This artwork also underscores the clear difference between the modern interpretation of power as a resource to be utilized for profit and livelihood and the Sámi worldview of life force as an innate power in creatures, people, and land. Tate Modern's legacy as a coal and oil power station is tied up in this, as is what the Sámi view as environmental exploitation by Nordic countries. While attempting to be standard bearers for sustainable power, Scandinavian countries have disagreed with the Sámi over the development of wind energy projects, river barriers, and digging operations on their native soil; the Sámi assert their fundamental freedoms, ways of life, and traditions are endangered. "It's very difficult being such a small minority to stand your ground when the reasons are grounded in global sustainability," Sara notes. "Extractivism has adopted the discourse of environmentalism, but still it's just aiming to find more suitable ways to maintain patterns of consumption."

Individual Conflicts

Sara and her relatives have themselves conflicted with the state authorities over its tightening rules on herding. In 2016, Sara's sibling initiated a series of ultimately unsuccessful legal cases over the forced culling of his animals, ostensibly to stop excessive feeding. In support, Sara created a extended series of creations named Pile O'Sápmi featuring a massive screen of four hundred animal bones, which was shown at the 2017 event Documenta 14 and later obtained by the national institution, where it resides in the entryway.

The Role of Art in Awareness

Among the community, art seems the only realm in which they can be heard by outsiders. Two years ago, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|