Exploring the Aroma of Apprehension: The Sámi Artist Transforms Tate's Exhibition Space with Reindeer Influenced Artwork

Visitors to the renowned gallery are familiar to unexpected experiences in its expansive Turbine Hall. They have relaxed under an artificial sun, glided down spiral slides, and witnessed AI-powered jellyfish floating through the air. Yet this marks the first time they will be immersing themselves in the intricate nose passages of a reindeer. The newest artist commission for this immense space—developed by Native Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—welcomes patrons into a labyrinthine structure based on the scaled-up inside of a reindeer's nose passages. Inside, they can wander around or relax on reindeer hides, tuning in on headphones to tribal seniors imparting stories and knowledge.

Why the Nose?

Why choose the nasal structure? It could seem playful, but the installation pays tribute to a little-known biological feat: experts have discovered that in a fraction of a second, the reindeer's nose can heat the surrounding air it takes in by 80 degrees celsius, enabling the animal to endure in harsh Arctic temperatures. Enlarging the nose to larger than human size, Sara notes, "generates a feeling of inferiority that you as a human being are not in control over nature." She is a ex- reporter, children's author, and rights advocate, who is from a pastoral family in the far north of Norway. "Possibly that generates the possibility to alter your outlook or evoke some humility," she continues.

A Celebration to Traditional Ways

The labyrinthine installation is one of several features in Sara's absorbing art project honoring the heritage, understanding, and philosophy of the Sámi, the sole native group in Europe. Traditionally mobile, the Sámi count about 100,000 people ranged across the Norwegian north, Finland, Sweden, and the Kola region (an territory they call Sápmi). They've faced discrimination, forced assimilation, and eradication of their dialect by all four countries. By focusing on the reindeer, an animal at the core of the Sámi cosmology and founding narrative, the art also highlights the people's challenges associated with the environmental emergency, land dispossession, and imperialism.

Meaning in Components

At the long access slope, there's a looming, eighty-five-foot sculpture of pelts entangled by utility lines. It serves as a metaphor for the governance and financial structures restricting the Sámi. Part pylon, part spiritual ascent, this component of the artwork, named Goavve-, points to the Sámi word for an harsh environmental condition, wherein dense coatings of ice form as varying weather liquefy and refreeze the snow, trapping the reindeers' primary cold-season nourishment, moss. This phenomenon is a consequence of global heating, which is taking place up to much more rapidly in the Far North than elsewhere.

A few years back, I met with Sara in a remote town during a goavvi winter and joined Sámi pastoralists on their motorized sleds in chilly conditions as they carried containers of food pellets on to the exposed Arctic plains to dispense manually. These animals surrounded round us, pawing the icy ground in futility for lichen-covered bits. This resource-intensive and labour-intensive method is having a severe effect on reindeer husbandry—and on the animals' natural survival. But the choice is malnutrition. When such conditions become frequent, reindeer are dying—a number from hunger, others suffocating after falling into streams through thinning ice sheets. To some extent, the art is a tribute to them. "With the layering of materials, in a way I'm bringing the phenomenon to London," says Sara.

Opposing Worldviews

The installation also emphasizes the stark divergence between the modern understanding of energy as a commodity to be exploited for gain and livelihood and the Sámi outlook of vitality as an natural essence in animals, humans, and land. This venue's past as a fossil fuel plant is tied up in this, as is what the Sámi consider green colonialism by regional governments. While attempting to be exemplars for renewable energy, these states have clashed with the Sámi over the construction of windfarms, water power facilities, and digging operations on their native soil; the Sámi contend their fundamental freedoms, incomes, and traditions are threatened. "It's hard being such a small minority to defend yourself when the arguments are grounded in saving the world," Sara comments. "Mining practices has co-opted the discourse of environmentalism, but still it's just attempting to find better ways to continue patterns of consumption."

Individual Struggles

Sara and her family have personally clashed with the state authorities over its ever-stricter regulations on herding. Previously, Sara's sibling undertook a series of ultimately unsuccessful legal cases over the mandatory slaughter of his animals, ostensibly to stop vegetation depletion. As a show of solidarity, Sara developed a extended series of creations named Pile O'Sápmi featuring a huge curtain of four hundred reindeer skulls, which was exhibited at the 2017 show Documenta 14 and later obtained by the public gallery, where it hangs in the entrance.

Art as Advocacy

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