Delving into the Aroma of Fear: Máret Ánne Sara Revamps The Gallery's Exhibition Space with Reindeer Influenced Installation

Guests to the renowned gallery are accustomed to unusual encounters in its expansive Turbine Hall. They've basked under an artificial sun, slid down spiral slides, and observed AI-powered sea creatures floating through the air. But this marks the first time they will be venturing themselves in the intricate nasal chambers of a reindeer. The current creative installation for this cavernous space—designed by Native Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—encourages patrons into a labyrinthine construction based on the expanded inside of a reindeer's nasal passages. Once inside, they can wander around or relax on pelts, listening on headphones to community leaders imparting narratives and wisdom.

The Significance of the Nose

Why the nose? It might seem whimsical, but the artwork pays tribute to a rarely recognized biological feat: scientists have discovered that in less than one second, the reindeer's nose can raise the temperature of the surrounding air it breathes in by 80°C, helping the animal to endure in inhospitable Arctic temperatures. Expanding the nose to bigger than a person, Sara notes, "produces a feeling of insignificance that you as a human being are not dominant over nature." Sara is a ex- reporter, young adult author, and land defender, who comes from a reindeer-herding family in the far north of Norway. "Perhaps that fosters the chance to alter your outlook or spark some humility," she states.

An Homage to Sámi Culture

The maze-like design is among various components in Sara's engaging commission celebrating the culture, science, and philosophy of the Sámi, Europe's only Indigenous people. Traditionally mobile, the Sámi number approximately 100,000 people spread across the Norwegian north, the Finnish Arctic, Sweden, and Russia's Kola Peninsula (an area they call Sápmi). They've faced discrimination, cultural suppression, and suppression of their dialect by all four countries. Through highlighting the reindeer, an animal at the center of the Sámi mythology and creation story, the installation also spotlights the community's challenges connected to the climate crisis, land dispossession, and external control.

Meaning in Materials

At the lengthy access ramp, there's a towering, 26-metre structure of reindeer hides ensnared by utility lines. It can be read as a metaphor for the political and economic systems limiting the Sámi. Partly a utility pole, part heavenly staircase, this section of the artwork, named Goavve-, points to the Sámi word for an harsh environmental condition, wherein solid coatings of ice develop as varying weather thaw and solidify again the snow, locking in the reindeers' primary winter sustenance, lichen. Goavvi is a result of climate change, which is taking place up to at an accelerated rate in the Arctic than in other regions.

A few years back, I met with Sara in the Norwegian far north during a severe cold period and joined Sámi herders on their snowmobiles in biting cold as they transported containers of animal nutrition on to the exposed frozen landscape to distribute by hand. The herd crowded round us, pawing the slippery ground in futility for lichen-covered morsels. This costly and labour-intensive process is having a severe effect on animal rearing—and on the animals' natural survival. However the choice is death. When such conditions become routine, reindeer are succumbing—some from starvation, others submerging after falling into water bodies through unstable frozen surfaces. To some extent, the installation is a monument to them. "By overlapping of materials, in a way I'm bringing the phenomenon to London," says Sara.

Contrasting Belief Systems

This artwork also emphasizes the stark difference between the industrial understanding of energy as a commodity to be utilized for economic benefit and existence and the Sámi outlook of vitality as an innate power in creatures, individuals, and land. Tate Modern's legacy as a coal and oil power station is connected to this, as is what the Sámi view as green colonialism by Nordic countries. While attempting to be standard bearers for sustainable power, Nordic nations have locked horns with the Sámi over the development of windfarms, river barriers, and digging operations on their native soil; the Sámi assert their legal protections, livelihoods, and traditions are threatened. "It's very difficult being such a limited population to defend yourself when the arguments are rooted in saving the world," Sara notes. "Extractivism has adopted the discourse of ecology, but nonetheless it's just striving to find alternative ways to continue habits of use."

Personal Challenges

The artist and her kin have themselves conflicted with the state authorities over its tightening rules on animal husbandry. A few years ago, Sara's sibling initiated a series of finally failed legal cases over the mandatory slaughter of his livestock, ostensibly to stop vegetation depletion. To back him, Sara created a extended series of artworks named Pile O'Sápmi comprising a colossal screen of numerous animal bones, which was displayed at the 2017's art exhibition Documenta 14 and later acquired by the national institution, where it hangs in the entrance.

Creative Expression as Advocacy

For many Sámi, visual expression appears the exclusive sphere in which they can be listened to by the global community. Recently, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|