Delving into the Aroma of Fear: Máret Ánne Sara Revamps Tate's Exhibition Space with Arctic Deer Influenced Exhibit

Attendees to the renowned gallery are familiar to unusual experiences in its spacious Turbine Hall. They have relaxed under an artificial sun, slid down spiral slides, and witnessed automated jellyfish drifting through the air. However this marks the initial time they will be engaging themselves in the complex nasal cavities of a reindeer. The newest artist commission for this cavernous space—designed by Indigenous Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—welcomes patrons into a maze-like design inspired by the enlarged interior of a reindeer's nasal passages. Once inside, they can wander around or chill out on skins, tuning in on earphones to Sámi elders telling tales and insights.

Focus on the Nasal Passages

Why choose the nasal structure? It may sound playful, but the exhibit honors a rarely recognized scientific wonder: experts have uncovered that in under a second, the reindeer's nose can warm the surrounding air it breathes in by 80 degrees celsius, enabling the creature to endure in extreme Arctic temperatures. Enlarging the nose to bigger than a person, Sara notes, "produces a perception of inferiority that you as a human being are not dominant over nature." She is a ex- writer, young adult author, and land defender, who hails from a reindeer-herding family in the Norwegian Arctic. "Maybe that fosters the chance to alter your viewpoint or evoke some humility," she states.

A Celebration to Sámi Culture

The winding design is one of several features in Sara's immersive exhibition showcasing the culture, science, and philosophy of the Sámi, the sole native group in Europe. Traditionally mobile, the Sámi number approximately 100,000 people spread across the Norwegian north, Finland, the Swedish Lapland, and the Kola region (an territory they call Sápmi). They've endured persecution, integration policies, and repression of their dialect by all four states. By focusing on the reindeer, an animal at the heart of the Sámi belief system and origin tale, the installation also draws attention to the people's challenges relating to the global warming, loss of territory, and external control.

Meaning in Materials

On the extended entrance incline, there's a towering, 26-meter sculpture of pelts trapped by utility lines. It serves as a symbol for the political and economic systems constraining the Sámi. Partly a utility pole, part heavenly staircase, this part of the exhibit, titled Goavve-, relates to the Sámi word for an extreme weather phenomenon, wherein thick sheets of ice form as changing weather thaw and ice over the snow, locking in the reindeers' primary cold-season nourishment, lichen. Goavvi is a result of global heating, which is occurring up to at an accelerated rate in the Arctic than elsewhere.

Three years ago, I met with Sara in Guovdageaidnu during a goavvi winter and went with Sámi herders on their motorized sleds in chilly conditions as they carried containers of food pellets on to the wind-scoured tundra to distribute by hand. These animals gathered round us, scratching the icy ground in futility for lichen-covered bits. This costly and laborious procedure is having a significant effect on animal rearing—and on the animals' independence. Yet the other option is malnutrition. As these icy periods become frequent, reindeer are succumbing—some from starvation, others drowning after plunging into streams through unstable frozen surfaces. On one level, the work is a monument to them. "With the layering of elements, in a way I'm transporting the goavvi to London," says Sara.

Diverging Worldviews

The installation also highlights the stark difference between the western interpretation of electricity as a asset to be utilized for gain and livelihood and the Sámi philosophy of vitality as an natural power in animals, people, and the environment. The gallery's past as a industrial facility is tied up in this, as is what the Sámi view as green colonialism by regional governments. While attempting to be leaders for sustainable power, Nordic nations have locked horns with the Sámi over the building of wind energy projects, water power facilities, and extraction sites on their ancestral land; the Sámi argue their human rights, livelihoods, and traditions are at risk. "It's very difficult being such a tiny group to stand your ground when the arguments are rooted in saving the world," Sara notes. "Resource exploitation has adopted the discourse of environmentalism, but still it's just aiming to find better ways to persist in practices of use."

Family Conflicts

Sara and her kin have themselves disagreed with the Norwegian government over its increasingly stringent policies on animal husbandry. Previously, Sara's brother undertook a series of finally failed lawsuits over the mandatory slaughter of his animals, ostensibly to stop vegetation depletion. To back him, Sara developed a multi-year set of artworks titled Pile O'Sápmi including a huge curtain of numerous animal bones, which was displayed at the the event Documenta 14 and later purchased by the public gallery, where it hangs in the entrance.

Art as Awareness

For numerous Indigenous people, creative work seems the exclusive realm in which they can be listened to by people of other nations. Two years ago, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|