Unveiling this Aroma of Fear: Máret Ánne Sara Revamps Tate's Exhibition Space with Arctic Deer Influenced Artwork

Visitors to the renowned gallery are accustomed to unexpected experiences in its vast Turbine Hall. They've relaxed under an simulated sun, slid down helter skelters, and seen AI-powered jellyfish drifting through the air. But this marks the initial time they will be immersing themselves in the intricate nasal cavities of a reindeer. The newest artistic project for this huge space—developed by Native Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—encourages visitors into a labyrinthine structure inspired by the scaled-up inside of a reindeer's nose airways. Once inside, they can wander around or chill out on reindeer hides, listening on headphones to tribal seniors sharing narratives and knowledge.

The Significance of the Nose

Why choose the nasal structure? It might sound whimsical, but the installation honors a obscure scientific wonder: experts have discovered that in under a second, the reindeer's nose can heat the ambient air it takes in by 80°C, enabling the animal to endure in harsh Arctic climates. Expanding the nose to larger than human size, Sara explains, "creates a sense of inferiority that you as a person are not superior over nature." The artist is a former writer, writer for kids, and land defender, who is from a reindeer-herding family in the far north of Norway. "Possibly that fosters the chance to change your viewpoint or evoke some modesty," she adds.

A Tribute to Traditional Ways

The labyrinthine structure is part of a elements in Sara's immersive exhibition honoring the heritage, knowledge, and beliefs of the Sámi, Europe's only Indigenous people. Partially migratory, the Sámi number about 100,000 people ranged across the Norwegian north, the Finnish Arctic, Sweden, and the Kola region (an territory they call Sápmi). They have endured oppression, forced assimilation, and suppression of their dialect by all four nations. With an emphasis on the reindeer, an creature at the center of the Sámi mythology and origin tale, the work also spotlights the group's issues associated with the climate crisis, land dispossession, and colonialism.

Symbolism in Components

At the long access ramp, there's a soaring, 26-metre sculpture of pelts ensnared by power and light cables. It can be read as a metaphor for the political and economic systems restricting the Sámi. Like an electrical tower, part celestial ladder, this component of the installation, named Goavve-, relates to the Sámi name for an harsh environmental condition, in which thick sheets of ice form as fluctuating conditions liquefy and refreeze the snow, locking in the reindeers' key cold-season food, lichen. The condition is a consequence of global heating, which is happening up to much more rapidly in the Far North than globally.

Three years ago, I visited Sara in Guovdageaidnu during a goavvi winter and joined Sámi reindeer keepers on their Arctic vehicles in freezing temperatures as they carried containers of animal nutrition on to the barren Arctic plains to dispense through labor. The herd gathered round us, digging the icy ground in vain attempts for mossy morsels. This resource-intensive and labour-intensive process is having a drastic impact on animal rearing—and on the animals' self-sufficiency. But the alternative is death. When such conditions become commonplace, reindeer are perishing—a number from hunger, others suffocating after falling into water bodies through unstable frozen surfaces. To some extent, the art is a memorial to them. "By overlapping of materials, in a way I'm introducing the condition to London," says Sara.

Diverging Belief Systems

The installation also emphasizes the stark divergence between the modern understanding of energy as a asset to be utilized for profit and existence and the Sámi worldview of life force as an inherent power in creatures, humans, and nature. This venue's past as a industrial facility is linked with this, as is what the Sámi see as eco-imperialism by Nordic countries. While attempting to be standard bearers for clean sources, Nordic nations have disagreed with the Sámi over the development of wind energy projects, river barriers, and extraction sites on their traditional territory; the Sámi assert their legal protections, livelihoods, and traditions are at risk. "It's challenging being such a limited population to protect your rights when the justifications are rooted in environmental protection," Sara comments. "Mining practices has co-opted the language of sustainability, but still it's just attempting to find more suitable ways to persist in practices of use."

Family Challenges

She and her relatives have personally disagreed with the state authorities over its ever-stricter regulations on herding. In 2016, Sara's brother initiated a series of unsuccessful court actions over the required reduction of his animals, ostensibly to stop excessive feeding. In support, Sara created a four-year series of artworks titled Pile O'Sápmi including a colossal drape of numerous animal bones, which was exhibited at the the show Documenta 14 and later acquired by the National Museum of Oslo, where it resides in the entryway.

Art as Awareness

For numerous Indigenous people, art appears the sole sphere in which they can be understood by people of other nations. In 2022, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|