Exploring the Aroma of Fear: Máret Ánne Sara Transforms The Gallery's Turbine Hall with Reindeer Inspired Exhibit

Attendees to Tate Modern are used to unexpected experiences in its spacious Turbine Hall. They have basked under an man-made sun, glided down amusement rides, and seen automated jellyfish hovering through the air. But this marks the inaugural time they will be immersing themselves in the intricate nasal cavities of a reindeer. The current artistic project for this cavernous space—developed by Indigenous Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—encourages gallerygoers into a labyrinthine design inspired by the expanded inside of a reindeer's nose airways. Inside, they can wander around or relax on pelts, listening on earphones to community leaders telling stories and insights.

Focus on the Nasal Passages

Why the nose? It might seem playful, but the artwork honors a rarely recognized biological feat: experts have discovered that in less than one second, the reindeer's nose can warm the surrounding air it takes in by 80°C, enabling the creature to survive in extreme Arctic conditions. Enlarging the nose to larger than human size, Sara says, "generates a feeling of inferiority that you as a person are not in control over nature." The artist is a ex- reporter, children's author, and environmental activist, who hails from a pastoral family in northern Norway. "Maybe that creates the possibility to alter your viewpoint or spark some humility," she continues.

A Celebration to Sámi Culture

The winding installation is one of several features in Sara's immersive art project showcasing the culture, understanding, and beliefs of the Sámi, the sole native group in Europe. Traditionally mobile, the Sámi number about 100,000 people spread across the Norwegian north, Finland, the Swedish Lapland, and the Kola region (an area they call Sápmi). They've experienced oppression, integration policies, and suppression of their dialect by all four countries. Through highlighting the reindeer, an animal at the core of the Sámi mythology and origin tale, the art also draws attention to the people's struggles connected to the climate crisis, property rights, and imperialism.

Symbolism in Materials

Along the long entry ramp, there's a towering, 26-meter formation of reindeer hides trapped by electrical wires. It serves as a analogy for the societal frameworks limiting the Sámi. Like an electrical tower, part spiritual ascent, this part of the exhibit, called Goavve-, relates to the Sámi term for an severe climatic event, in which dense sheets of ice develop as fluctuating conditions melt and ice over the snow, trapping the reindeers' main cold-season sustenance, lichen. This phenomenon is a consequence of global heating, which is happening up to much more rapidly in the Polar region than elsewhere.

Three years ago, I visited Sara in the Norwegian far north during a goavvi winter and went with Sámi reindeer keepers on their Arctic vehicles in chilly conditions as they hauled containers of animal nutrition on to the wind-scoured Arctic plains to dispense manually. The herd gathered round us, digging the frozen ground in vain for vegetative morsels. This expensive and demanding process is having a severe impact on reindeer husbandry—and on the animals' natural survival. But the other option is malnutrition. As these icy periods become routine, reindeer are dying—a number from lack of food, others submerging after sinking in lakes and rivers through thinning ice sheets. On one level, the work is a monument to them. "By overlapping of materials, in a way I'm transporting the goavvi to London," says Sara.

Opposing Worldviews

The installation also underscores the clear divergence between the modern view of electricity as a asset to be exploited for profit and livelihood and the Sámi worldview of life force as an innate power in animals, individuals, and land. Tate Modern's history as a industrial facility is connected to this, as is what the Sámi consider environmental exploitation by Scandinavian states. In their efforts to be leaders for sustainable power, Nordic nations have disagreed with the Sámi over the building of wind energy projects, water power facilities, and mines on their ancestral land; the Sámi argue their fundamental freedoms, incomes, and traditions are threatened. "It's very difficult being such a small minority to protect your rights when the reasons are grounded in environmental protection," Sara comments. "Mining practices has adopted the rhetoric of sustainability, but yet it's just attempting to find better ways to persist in practices of use."

Individual Struggles

She and her family have themselves clashed with the Norwegian government over its increasingly stringent rules on reindeer management. Previously, Sara's sibling initiated a set of unsuccessful court actions over the forced culling of his animals, apparently to stop overgrazing. As a show of solidarity, Sara developed a multi-year set of creations named Pile O'Sápmi comprising a massive curtain of four hundred cranial remains, which was shown at the 2017 show Documenta 14 and later acquired by the public gallery, where it hangs in the lobby.

Creative Expression as Advocacy

For numerous Indigenous people, creative work appears the sole realm in which they can be listened to by the global community. In 2022, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|