Exploring the Aroma of Apprehension: Máret Ánne Sara Transforms Tate's Exhibition Space with Arctic Deer Inspired Installation

Attendees to Tate Modern are accustomed to unexpected displays in its spacious Turbine Hall. They've basked under an man-made sun, descended down helter skelters, and witnessed AI-powered sea creatures drifting through the air. However this marks the first time they will be venturing themselves in the intricate nose cavities of a reindeer. The current creative installation for this immense space—created by Native Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—encourages visitors into a maze-like design inspired by the enlarged inside of a reindeer's nasal passages. Once inside, they can wander around or relax on pelts, listening on headphones to Sámi elders telling tales and wisdom.

Why the Nose?

Why choose the nasal structure? It might sound whimsical, but the artwork pays tribute to a rarely recognized natural marvel: scientists have uncovered that in a fraction of a second, the reindeer's nose can raise the temperature of the surrounding air it breathes in by 80 degrees celsius, allowing the animal to survive in harsh Arctic temperatures. Expanding the nose to larger than human size, Sara notes, "generates a perception of insignificance that you as a individual are not superior over nature." The artist is a ex- writer, writer for kids, and rights advocate, who comes from a reindeer-herding family in northern Norway. "Perhaps that creates the possibility to shift your perspective or spark some modesty," she adds.

An Homage to Traditional Ways

The labyrinthine installation is one of several features in Sara's immersive exhibition celebrating the culture, knowledge, and beliefs of the Sámi, the sole native group in Europe. Traditionally mobile, the Sámi number approximately 100,000 people distributed across northern Norway, the Finnish Arctic, the Swedish Lapland, and Russia's Kola Peninsula (an region they call Sápmi). They have experienced persecution, integration policies, and repression of their dialect by all four states. With an emphasis on the reindeer, an animal at the core of the Sámi cosmology and founding narrative, the work also spotlights the people's struggles relating to the climate crisis, loss of territory, and colonialism.

Metaphor in Components

At the extended entrance ramp, there's a towering, 26-metre sculpture of pelts trapped by utility lines. It represents a symbol for the political and economic systems restricting the Sámi. Partly a utility pole, part celestial ladder, this part of the exhibit, called Goavve-, points to the Sámi term for an severe climatic event, whereby dense sheets of ice appear as varying temperatures liquefy and ice over the snow, locking in the reindeers' primary winter nourishment, fungus. Goavvi is a consequence of climate change, which is occurring up to much more rapidly in the Polar region than in other regions.

Previously, I met with Sara in a remote town during a goavvi winter and went with Sámi reindeer keepers on their snowmobiles in biting cold as they hauled trailers of supplementary feed on to the barren tundra to provide by hand. The reindeer gathered round us, scratching the slippery ground in futility for mossy pieces. This costly and labour-intensive process is having a significant influence on animal rearing—and on the animals' natural survival. Yet the other option is starvation. As goavvi winters become frequent, reindeer are dying—a number from starvation, others submerging after falling into water bodies through thinning ice sheets. In a sense, the work is a monument to them. "With the layering of components, in a way I'm introducing the condition to London," says Sara.

Diverging Belief Systems

The sculpture also emphasizes the sharp divergence between the industrial view of energy as a commodity to be harnessed for economic benefit and livelihood and the Sámi outlook of energy as an innate essence in animals, individuals, and land. Tate Modern's history as a coal and oil power station is tied up in this, as is what the Sámi see as eco-imperialism by Scandinavian states. In their efforts to be exemplars for sustainable power, these states have locked horns with the Sámi over the building of turbine fields, river barriers, and digging operations on their native soil; the Sámi assert their human rights, livelihoods, and traditions are threatened. "It's hard being such a small minority to stand your ground when the reasons are rooted in saving the world," Sara observes. "Extractivism has adopted the rhetoric of environmentalism, but nonetheless it's just aiming to find alternative ways to maintain patterns of expenditure."

Individual Challenges

The artist and her relatives have themselves disagreed with the national administration over its tightening rules on animal husbandry. Previously, Sara's brother initiated a set of finally failed legal cases over the forced culling of his animals, ostensibly to stop overgrazing. To back him, Sara produced a extended set of artworks called Pile O'Sápmi including a huge drape of four hundred reindeer skulls, which was shown at the 2017 event Documenta 14 and later acquired by the public gallery, where it resides in the entryway.

The Role of Art in Activism

For numerous Indigenous people, visual expression appears the exclusive sphere in which they can be heard by the global community. In 2022, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|