Exploring this Smell of Anxiety: The Sámi Artist Transforms The Gallery's Turbine Hall with Arctic Deer Inspired Artwork

Visitors to Tate Modern are accustomed to unusual encounters in its spacious Turbine Hall. They have sunbathed under an simulated sun, descended down helter skelters, and observed AI-powered sea creatures hovering through the air. But this marks the first time they will be immersing themselves in the detailed nasal chambers of a reindeer. The newest artistic project for this immense space—designed by Indigenous Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—invites visitors into a winding construction based on the scaled-up interior of a reindeer's nose passages. Once inside, they can stroll around or relax on reindeer hides, tuning in on earphones to community leaders telling stories and knowledge.

Why the Nose?

What's the focus on the nose? It might sound playful, but the artwork honors a rarely recognized natural marvel: experts have found that in under a second, the reindeer's nose can heat the incoming air it takes in by 80°C, allowing the animal to endure in extreme Arctic climates. Scaling the nose to larger than human size, Sara notes, "creates a perception of inferiority that you as a person are not superior over nature." The artist is a ex- writer, young adult author, and land defender, who is from a herding family in the Norwegian Arctic. "Possibly that generates the potential to change your perspective or trigger some humility," she adds.

A Tribute to Indigenous Heritage

The maze-like installation is part of a features in Sara's engaging exhibition showcasing the culture, knowledge, and worldview of the Sámi, the sole native group in Europe. Semi-nomadic, the Sámi number about 100,000 people distributed across northern Norway, Finland, the Swedish Lapland, and the Kola region (an territory they call Sápmi). They've endured persecution, forced assimilation, and repression of their tongue by all four states. Through highlighting the reindeer, an creature at the heart of the Sámi belief system and founding narrative, the installation also highlights the people's struggles associated with the climate crisis, land dispossession, and colonialism.

Symbolism in Components

At the lengthy entrance ramp, there's a looming, 26-metre sculpture of pelts trapped by electrical wires. It can be read as a symbol for the governance and financial structures limiting the Sámi. Like an electrical tower, part heavenly staircase, this component of the exhibit, named Goavve-, refers to the Sámi word for an severe climatic event, wherein dense layers of ice appear as varying conditions thaw and refreeze the snow, locking in the reindeers' main winter sustenance, lichen. This phenomenon is a outcome of planetary warming, which is taking place up to four times faster in the Far North than globally.

Previously, I traveled to see Sara in Guovdageaidnu during a goavvi winter and joined Sámi reindeer keepers on their motorized sleds in chilly conditions as they transported trailers of supplementary feed on to the exposed tundra to dispense manually. The reindeer crowded round us, scratching the frozen ground in vain for mossy morsels. This resource-intensive and laborious procedure is having a severe impact on reindeer husbandry—and on the animals' self-sufficiency. But the choice is death. As these icy periods become frequent, reindeer are perishing—a number from lack of food, others submerging after plunging into water bodies through prematurely melting ice. In a sense, the work is a memorial to them. "With the layering of materials, in a way I'm introducing the goavvi to London," says Sara.

Contrasting Belief Systems

The sculpture also highlights the stark difference between the industrial interpretation of electricity as a asset to be harnessed for economic benefit and existence and the Sámi philosophy of energy as an innate power in animals, humans, and land. This venue's history as a coal and oil power station is tied up in this, as is what the Sámi consider green colonialism by Scandinavian states. As they strive to be exemplars for renewable energy, Nordic nations have disagreed with the Sámi over the development of turbine fields, river barriers, and digging operations on their traditional territory; the Sámi argue their legal protections, ways of life, and culture are threatened. "It's hard being such a tiny group to defend yourself when the reasons are grounded in global sustainability," Sara notes. "Mining practices has adopted the discourse of environmentalism, but nonetheless it's just aiming to find better ways to continue habits of expenditure."

Individual Conflicts

Sara and her family have themselves disagreed with the national administration over its increasingly stringent policies on herding. A few years ago, Sara's sibling undertook a series of ultimately unsuccessful court actions over the required reduction of his herd, apparently to stop excessive feeding. As a show of solidarity, Sara created a four-year collection of creations called Pile O'Sápmi comprising a massive curtain of numerous animal bones, which was exhibited at the the art exhibition Documenta 14 and later obtained by the public gallery, where it resides in the lobby.

The Role of Art in Activism

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