Exploring the Smell of Fear: Máret Ánne Sara Transforms The Gallery's Exhibition Space with Arctic Deer Inspired Exhibit

Guests to Tate Modern are accustomed to surprising experiences in its expansive Turbine Hall. They've sunbathed under an artificial sun, slid down helter skelters, and seen AI-powered jellyfish hovering through the air. But this marks the first time they will be venturing themselves in the complex nasal chambers of a reindeer. The current artistic project for this immense space—developed by Native Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—invites visitors into a labyrinthine design based on the enlarged interior of a reindeer's nasal passages. Inside, they can wander around or chill out on pelts, tuning in on earphones to community leaders telling narratives and wisdom.

Why the Nose?

Why the nose? It may seem quirky, but the exhibit honors a little-known natural marvel: experts have uncovered that in under a second, the reindeer's nose can raise the temperature of the ambient air it breathes in by 80°C, allowing the creature to endure in harsh Arctic climates. Expanding the nose to bigger than a person, Sara says, "creates a feeling of insignificance that you as a individual are not in control over nature." The artist is a former reporter, children's author, and environmental activist, who comes from a reindeer-herding family in the far north of Norway. "Possibly that fosters the potential to shift your viewpoint or trigger some humbleness," she states.

An Homage to Indigenous Heritage

The winding design is among various components in Sara's engaging art project honoring the heritage, understanding, and worldview of the Sámi, the sole native group in Europe. Semi-nomadic, the Sámi number approximately 100,000 people spread across northern Norway, the Finnish Arctic, the Swedish Lapland, and the Kola region (an region they call Sápmi). They've faced oppression, forced assimilation, and eradication of their language by all four nations. By focusing on the reindeer, an creature at the heart of the Sámi mythology and founding narrative, the art also highlights the group's challenges relating to the climate crisis, land dispossession, and external control.

Metaphor in Elements

On the long access ramp, there's a soaring, 26-meter sculpture of pelts entangled by power and light cables. It can be read as a metaphor for the governance and financial structures restricting the Sámi. Part pylon, part spiritual ascent, this section of the installation, titled Goavve-, relates to the Sámi term for an severe climatic event, in which dense layers of ice appear as changing conditions melt and solidify again the snow, locking in the reindeers' key winter sustenance, fungus. This phenomenon is a outcome of climate change, which is taking place up to much more rapidly in the Arctic than in other regions.

Previously, I traveled to see Sara in the Norwegian far north during a goavvi winter and accompanied Sámi reindeer keepers on their motorized sleds in chilly conditions as they hauled carts of food pellets on to the barren frozen landscape to dispense manually. The herd crowded round us, pawing the slippery ground in futility for mossy bits. This resource-intensive and laborious process is having a drastic influence on herding practices—and on the animals' self-sufficiency. Yet the alternative is starvation. When such conditions become routine, reindeer are perishing—some from lack of food, others submerging after plunging into water bodies through thinning ice sheets. To some extent, the work is a monument to them. "By overlapping of materials, in a way I'm transporting the condition to London," says Sara.

Contrasting Belief Systems

The installation also highlights the stark difference between the modern understanding of power as a commodity to be utilized for economic benefit and existence and the Sámi philosophy of life force as an inherent power in animals, humans, and land. Tate Modern's past as a industrial facility is connected to this, as is what the Sámi see as eco-imperialism by Scandinavian states. While attempting to be exemplars for renewable energy, Scandinavian countries have locked horns with the Sámi over the building of wind energy projects, water power facilities, and mines on their native soil; the Sámi argue their legal protections, incomes, and traditions are at risk. "It's hard being such a tiny group to stand your ground when the arguments are grounded in global sustainability," Sara comments. "Extractivism has appropriated the rhetoric of environmentalism, but yet it's just aiming to find better ways to continue practices of consumption."

Individual Struggles

She and her family have themselves clashed with the Norwegian government over its tightening rules on reindeer management. In 2016, Sara's brother undertook a series of ultimately unsuccessful court actions over the required reduction of his livestock, ostensibly to stop excessive feeding. To back him, Sara produced a multi-year set of artworks called Pile O'Sápmi comprising a colossal screen of 400 animal bones, which was exhibited at the 2017 show Documenta 14 and later acquired by the national institution, where it is displayed in the lobby.

Art as Advocacy

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