Unveiling this Aroma of Fear: The Sámi Artist Reimagines Tate's Turbine Hall with Arctic Deer Influenced Artwork

Visitors to Tate Modern are accustomed to unusual encounters in its spacious Turbine Hall. They've relaxed under an man-made sun, descended down amusement rides, and witnessed AI-powered jellyfish drifting through the air. Yet this marks the inaugural time they will be venturing themselves in the intricate nose cavities of a reindeer. The current artistic project for this immense space—designed by Indigenous Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—encourages visitors into a maze-like design inspired by the scaled-up interior of a reindeer's nose airways. Once inside, they can meander around or relax on reindeer hides, tuning in on headphones to Sámi elders imparting stories and wisdom.

Focus on the Nasal Passages

What's the focus on the nose? It may sound playful, but the exhibit honors a rarely recognized biological feat: scientists have uncovered that in under a second, the reindeer's nose can raise the temperature of the ambient air it inhales by eighty degrees, enabling the creature to thrive in harsh Arctic temperatures. Enlarging the nose to bigger than a person, Sara says, "generates a sense of insignificance that you as a human being are not superior over nature." The artist is a former reporter, children's author, and land defender, who comes from a reindeer-herding family in the Norwegian Arctic. "Possibly that fosters the potential to shift your outlook or trigger some humility," she continues.

A Celebration to Indigenous Heritage

The maze-like structure is among various components in Sara's immersive commission honoring the culture, understanding, and worldview of the Sámi, the sole native group in Europe. Semi-nomadic, the Sámi total about 100,000 people distributed across the Norwegian north, Finland, the Swedish Lapland, and the Kola region (an region they call Sápmi). They've faced discrimination, cultural suppression, and repression of their tongue by all four states. With an emphasis on the reindeer, an creature at the core of the Sámi mythology and founding narrative, the art also spotlights the group's issues relating to the environmental emergency, land dispossession, and imperialism.

Metaphor in Elements

At the long entry incline, there's a looming, eighty-five-foot formation of pelts trapped by power and light cables. It serves as a symbol for the political and economic systems restricting the Sámi. Part pylon, part spiritual ascent, this component of the exhibit, named Goavve-, relates to the Sámi name for an extreme weather phenomenon, whereby solid layers of ice appear as varying weather melt and ice over the snow, trapping the reindeers' key winter food, fungus. The condition is a result of global heating, which is happening up to much more rapidly in the Arctic than in other regions.

Previously, I met with Sara in a remote town during a icy season and joined Sámi herders on their Arctic vehicles in freezing temperatures as they transported containers of supplementary feed on to the exposed Arctic plains to distribute through labor. The reindeer surrounded round us, scratching the slippery ground in futility for vegetative bits. This expensive and labour-intensive method is having a drastic influence on reindeer husbandry—and on the animals' independence. But the alternative is starvation. As goavvi winters become routine, reindeer are succumbing—some from starvation, others suffocating after falling into lakes and rivers through prematurely melting ice. On one level, the installation is a memorial to them. "By overlapping of elements, in a way I'm bringing the goavvi to London," says Sara.

Opposing Worldviews

The installation also highlights the stark divergence between the western understanding of power as a asset to be utilized for profit and existence and the Sámi philosophy of vitality as an natural essence in creatures, people, and nature. This venue's legacy as a coal and oil power station is connected to this, as is what the Sámi see as environmental exploitation by Scandinavian states. In their efforts to be standard bearers for clean sources, Nordic nations have clashed with the Sámi over the development of turbine fields, water power facilities, and extraction sites on their native soil; the Sámi argue their fundamental freedoms, incomes, and culture are endangered. "It's very difficult being such a small minority to protect your rights when the justifications are rooted in environmental protection," Sara notes. "Extractivism has appropriated the language of ecology, but still it's just striving to find more suitable ways to continue practices of consumption."

Personal Challenges

The artist and her relatives have themselves conflicted with the Norwegian government over its tightening regulations on animal husbandry. In 2016, Sara's brother embarked on a sequence of ultimately unsuccessful lawsuits over the required reduction of his herd, ostensibly to stop vegetation depletion. As a show of solidarity, Sara produced a multi-year series of artworks titled Pile O'Sápmi comprising a massive screen of four hundred animal bones, which was displayed at the the show Documenta 14 and later purchased by the national institution, where it is displayed in the entrance.

The Role of Art in Activism

For many Sámi, creative work is the exclusive realm in which they can be understood by the global community. Recently, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|