Exploring the Smell of Anxiety: The Sámi Artist Transforms Tate's Turbine Hall with Reindeer Themed Artwork

Visitors to the renowned gallery are used to unexpected experiences in its expansive Turbine Hall. They have basked under an man-made sun, slid down helter skelters, and witnessed automated sea creatures drifting through the air. Yet this marks the first time they will be engaging themselves in the complex nose chambers of a reindeer. The current artist commission for this immense space—created by Native Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—welcomes gallerygoers into a labyrinthine structure inspired by the expanded inside of a reindeer's nose passages. Upon entering, they can stroll around or unwind on pelts, tuning in on headphones to community leaders imparting tales and wisdom.

The Significance of the Nose

What's the focus on the nose? It may sound playful, but the artwork pays tribute to a little-known natural marvel: experts have discovered that in a fraction of a second, the reindeer's nose can raise the temperature of the ambient air it inhales by eighty degrees, allowing the creature to survive in inhospitable Arctic climates. Scaling the nose to larger than human size, Sara explains, "creates a sense of insignificance that you as a individual are not superior over nature." Sara is a ex- writer, young adult author, and environmental activist, who comes from a herding family in the Norwegian Arctic. "Maybe that creates the chance to shift your viewpoint or spark some modesty," she adds.

A Celebration to Sámi Culture

The maze-like structure is part of a components in Sara's absorbing exhibition showcasing the traditions, knowledge, and philosophy of the Sámi, Europe's only Indigenous people. Partially migratory, the Sámi count about 100,000 people spread across the Norwegian north, Finland, Sweden, and the Russian Arctic (an territory they call Sápmi). They have faced discrimination, cultural suppression, and repression of their tongue by all four states. Through highlighting the reindeer, an animal at the center of the Sámi belief system and founding narrative, the art also draws attention to the people's challenges relating to the climate crisis, property rights, and imperialism.

Metaphor in Elements

Along the lengthy entry slope, there's a soaring, eighty-five-foot formation of reindeer hides trapped by power and light cables. It represents a metaphor for the political and economic systems constraining the Sámi. Part pylon, part celestial ladder, this section of the artwork, titled Goavve-, refers to the Sámi term for an harsh environmental condition, in which thick layers of ice appear as fluctuating temperatures liquefy and ice over the snow, locking in the reindeers' key winter food, lichen. Goavvi is a outcome of global heating, which is occurring up to much more rapidly in the Polar region than globally.

Three years ago, I met with Sara in a remote town during a icy season and accompanied Sámi herders on their motorized sleds in freezing temperatures as they carried trailers of animal nutrition on to the wind-scoured tundra to dispense manually. The reindeer crowded round us, scratching the frozen ground in vain attempts for vegetative pieces. This expensive and laborious procedure is having a drastic impact on animal rearing—and on the animals' self-sufficiency. However the choice is starvation. As these icy periods become frequent, reindeer are succumbing—some from starvation, others suffocating after plunging into streams through unstable frozen surfaces. In a sense, the installation is a monument to them. "By overlapping of elements, in a way I'm transporting the phenomenon to London," says Sara.

Opposing Worldviews

This artwork also underscores the clear difference between the industrial understanding of electricity as a resource to be harnessed for gain and livelihood and the Sámi outlook of vitality as an inherent essence in animals, people, and nature. Tate Modern's legacy as a industrial facility is linked with this, as is what the Sámi view as environmental exploitation by Scandinavian states. As they strive to be leaders for sustainable power, Scandinavian countries have locked horns with the Sámi over the construction of turbine fields, river barriers, and mines on their ancestral land; the Sámi argue their human rights, ways of life, and traditions are at risk. "It's challenging being such a limited population to defend yourself when the justifications are grounded in environmental protection," Sara observes. "Mining practices has appropriated the language of environmentalism, but yet it's just aiming to find more suitable ways to maintain patterns of expenditure."

Family Struggles

She and her kin have personally disagreed with the Norwegian government over its increasingly stringent regulations on animal husbandry. A few years ago, Sara's brother initiated a set of finally failed court actions over the mandatory slaughter of his livestock, supposedly to stop overgrazing. In support, Sara produced a extended collection of pieces named Pile O'Sápmi comprising a massive screen of four hundred cranial remains, which was shown at the 2017's event Documenta 14 and later obtained by the public gallery, where it resides in the entrance.

Creative Expression as Advocacy

Among the community, creative work seems the sole domain in which they can be heard by people of other nations. Two years ago, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|