Delving into this Scent of Fear: The Sámi Artist Transforms Tate's Turbine Hall with Arctic Deer Themed Artwork

Attendees to the renowned gallery are used to surprising experiences in its expansive Turbine Hall. They've sunbathed under an man-made sun, descended down spiral slides, and observed robotic jellyfish floating through the air. But this marks the inaugural time they will be immersing themselves in the detailed nasal cavities of a reindeer. The newest artistic project for this immense space—developed by Native Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—invites gallerygoers into a labyrinthine design modeled after the scaled-up interior of a reindeer's nasal cavities. Once inside, they can meander around or chill out on reindeer hides, listening on headphones to Sámi elders telling narratives and insights.

Focus on the Nasal Passages

Why the nose? It could seem whimsical, but the artwork celebrates a little-known natural marvel: scientists have uncovered that in less than one second, the reindeer's nose can warm the incoming air it breathes in by eighty degrees, enabling the creature to thrive in harsh Arctic climates. Enlarging the nose to bigger than a person, Sara notes, "generates a feeling of insignificance that you as a person are not dominant over nature." She is a ex- reporter, writer for kids, and rights advocate, who is from a herding family in the far north of Norway. "Perhaps that creates the chance to shift your viewpoint or evoke some humbleness," she states.

An Homage to Traditional Ways

The winding design is one of several components in Sara's engaging exhibition honoring the heritage, understanding, and beliefs of the Sámi, the sole native group in Europe. Traditionally mobile, the Sámi number approximately 100,000 people ranged across the Norwegian north, the Finnish Arctic, Sweden, and Russia's Kola Peninsula (an region they call Sápmi). They have faced persecution, cultural suppression, and eradication of their tongue by all four countries. With an emphasis on the reindeer, an creature at the core of the Sámi belief system and creation story, the art also spotlights the community's issues relating to the climate crisis, loss of territory, and colonialism.

Metaphor in Components

On the long entry ramp, there's a looming, 26-meter structure of pelts entangled by utility lines. It represents a analogy for the societal frameworks limiting the Sámi. Partly a utility pole, part spiritual ascent, this component of the exhibit, called Goavve-, relates to the Sámi word for an harsh environmental condition, in which dense coatings of ice form as fluctuating temperatures liquefy and solidify again the snow, trapping the reindeers' primary cold-season food, fungus. The condition is a result of global heating, which is occurring up to much more rapidly in the Far North than elsewhere.

A few years back, I traveled to see Sara in the Norwegian far north during a goavvi winter and joined Sámi pastoralists on their Arctic vehicles in freezing temperatures as they hauled trailers of animal nutrition on to the wind-scoured Arctic plains to provide by hand. The reindeer gathered round us, pawing the slippery ground in vain for mossy pieces. This costly and labour-intensive process is having a drastic effect on animal rearing—and on the animals' natural survival. Yet the choice is death. As goavvi winters become frequent, reindeer are perishing—some from lack of food, others submerging after falling into lakes and rivers through unstable frozen surfaces. In a sense, the installation is a tribute to them. "By overlapping of elements, in a way I'm transporting the phenomenon to London," says Sara.

Diverging Perspectives

This artwork also underscores the sharp divergence between the modern view of energy as a resource to be exploited for profit and survival and the Sámi philosophy of energy as an innate life force in creatures, humans, and nature. This venue's past as a coal and oil power station is linked with this, as is what the Sámi view as green colonialism by Nordic countries. In their efforts to be exemplars for renewable energy, Scandinavian countries have disagreed with the Sámi over the building of windfarms, water power facilities, and mines on their traditional territory; the Sámi argue their legal protections, ways of life, and culture are threatened. "It's very difficult being such a limited population to stand your ground when the justifications are based on global sustainability," Sara comments. "Mining practices has appropriated the rhetoric of ecology, but still it's just striving to find more suitable ways to continue patterns of use."

Personal Conflicts

She and her family have themselves conflicted with the state authorities over its ever-stricter rules on herding. Previously, Sara's sibling initiated a sequence of finally failed court actions over the mandatory slaughter of his livestock, apparently to stop overgrazing. To back him, Sara produced a extended set of artworks titled Pile O'Sápmi including a colossal screen of 400 animal bones, which was displayed at the 2017's art exhibition Documenta 14 and later purchased by the National Museum of Oslo, where it is displayed in the entryway.

Creative Expression as Activism

Among the community, creative work seems the sole realm in which they can be understood by outsiders. Recently, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|