Unveiling the Smell of Fear: The Sámi Artist Reimagines Tate's Exhibition Space with Arctic Deer Inspired Artwork
Guests to Tate Modern are accustomed to unusual experiences in its spacious Turbine Hall. They've relaxed under an simulated sun, glided down amusement rides, and witnessed automated jellyfish floating through the air. However this marks the initial time they will be engaging themselves in the detailed nasal passages of a reindeer. The latest artist commission for this immense space—developed by Indigenous Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—invites patrons into a winding construction based on the enlarged inside of a reindeer's nasal airways. Once inside, they can meander around or unwind on pelts, listening on headphones to community leaders telling tales and wisdom.
Why the Nose?
Why the nose? It may seem playful, but the installation pays tribute to a little-known biological feat: scientists have discovered that in under a second, the reindeer's nose can raise the temperature of the surrounding air it inhales by 80°C, helping the animal to endure in harsh Arctic temperatures. Enlarging the nose to bigger than a person, Sara notes, "generates a sense of inferiority that you as a human being are not superior over nature." Sara is a former reporter, writer for kids, and rights advocate, who hails from a pastoral family in northern Norway. "Perhaps that creates the potential to change your outlook or spark some modesty," she states.
A Celebration to Indigenous Heritage
The winding installation is one of several features in Sara's engaging exhibition showcasing the culture, knowledge, and philosophy of the Sámi, Europe's only Indigenous people. Partially migratory, the Sámi count approximately 100,000 people spread across the Norwegian north, the Finnish Arctic, the Swedish Lapland, and the Russian Arctic (an territory they call Sápmi). They have experienced persecution, cultural suppression, and eradication of their tongue by all four states. By focusing on the reindeer, an creature at the center of the Sámi mythology and creation story, the work also highlights the group's issues connected to the environmental emergency, property rights, and imperialism.
Metaphor in Elements
At the extended entry ramp, there's a looming, 26-metre structure of skins entangled by electrical wires. It represents a symbol for the societal frameworks limiting the Sámi. Part pylon, part heavenly staircase, this component of the exhibit, called Goavve-, points to the Sámi term for an extreme weather phenomenon, whereby dense coatings of ice appear as changing conditions melt and refreeze the snow, trapping the reindeers' main cold-season nourishment, moss. Goavvi is a outcome of planetary warming, which is occurring up to four times faster in the Polar region than elsewhere.
A few years back, I traveled to see Sara in the Norwegian far north during a severe cold period and joined Sámi herders on their motorized sleds in biting cold as they carried containers of supplementary feed on to the wind-scoured Arctic plains to distribute manually. The herd crowded round us, scratching the slippery ground in vain for vegetative morsels. This costly and demanding process is having a significant effect on herding practices—and on the animals' independence. Yet the alternative is death. As goavvi winters become routine, reindeer are perishing—some from hunger, others drowning after falling 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 transporting the phenomenon to London," says Sara.
Opposing Belief Systems
The installation also underscores the sharp difference between the industrial understanding of energy as a asset to be exploited for economic benefit and survival and the Sámi outlook of energy as an innate life force in animals, humans, and the environment. Tate Modern's history as a fossil fuel plant is connected to this, as is what the Sámi consider green colonialism by Nordic countries. In their efforts to be exemplars for renewable energy, these states have clashed with the Sámi over the building of wind energy projects, river barriers, and mines on their native soil; the Sámi argue their legal protections, ways of life, and culture are threatened. "It's challenging being such a small minority to defend yourself when the arguments are based on environmental protection," Sara notes. "Resource exploitation has co-opted the discourse of environmentalism, but nonetheless it's just aiming to find alternative ways to continue habits of expenditure."
Family Conflicts
Sara and her kin have themselves conflicted with the national administration over its tightening policies on reindeer management. In 2016, Sara's sibling undertook a series of ultimately unsuccessful court actions over the mandatory slaughter of his animals, supposedly to stop excessive feeding. As a show of solidarity, Sara produced a multi-year set of pieces named Pile O'Sápmi featuring a massive drape of numerous reindeer skulls, which was exhibited at the 2017 art exhibition Documenta 14 and later obtained by the National Museum of Oslo, where it is displayed in the lobby.
Creative Expression as Activism
For many Sámi, visual expression appears the only domain in which they can be heard by outsiders. In 2022, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|
