Delving into the Scent of Apprehension: The Sámi Artist Revamps Tate's Exhibition Space with Arctic Deer Themed Exhibit
Visitors to Tate Modern are accustomed to surprising displays in its spacious Turbine Hall. They have basked under an man-made sun, glided down helter skelters, and observed AI-powered jellyfish hovering through the air. But this marks the initial time they will be venturing themselves in the complex nose chambers of a reindeer. The current creative installation for this huge space—created by Native Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—welcomes visitors into a maze-like structure based on the scaled-up interior of a reindeer's nose cavities. Once inside, they can meander around or unwind on pelts, tuning in on earphones to tribal seniors telling tales and wisdom.
Focus on the Nasal Passages
What's the focus on the nose? It might sound whimsical, but the artwork celebrates a obscure natural marvel: researchers have discovered that in a fraction of a second, the reindeer's nose can raise the temperature of the incoming air it breathes in by 80 degrees celsius, helping the animal to endure in extreme Arctic conditions. Expanding the nose to larger than human size, Sara says, "produces a perception of insignificance that you as a person are not in control over nature." She is a ex- journalist, young adult author, and environmental activist, who comes from a reindeer-herding family in the Norwegian Arctic. "Possibly that fosters the chance to change your viewpoint or spark some humbleness," she continues.
A Celebration to Sámi Culture
The winding design is among various features in Sara's engaging commission honoring the heritage, understanding, and beliefs of the Sámi, the sole native group in Europe. Partially migratory, the Sámi count roughly 100,000 people ranged across the Norwegian north, Finland, Sweden, and the Russian Arctic (an region they call Sápmi). They've experienced discrimination, integration policies, and repression of their tongue by all four states. By focusing on the reindeer, an creature at the heart of the Sámi belief system and creation story, the work also draws attention to the community's struggles connected to the environmental emergency, land dispossession, and external control.
Meaning in Elements
On the extended entrance incline, there's a soaring, 26-meter sculpture of reindeer hides ensnared by electrical wires. It represents a symbol for the governance and financial structures constraining the Sámi. Part pylon, part spiritual ascent, this part of the artwork, titled Goavve-, relates to the Sámi word for an harsh environmental condition, wherein solid coatings of ice appear as changing temperatures thaw and ice over the snow, encasing the reindeers' key cold-season sustenance, fungus. This phenomenon is a outcome of planetary warming, which is taking place up to four times faster in the Arctic than globally.
Three years ago, I traveled to see Sara in Guovdageaidnu during a icy season and accompanied Sámi herders on their motorized sleds in biting cold as they transported trailers of food pellets on to the exposed tundra to provide manually. These animals surrounded round us, scratching the icy ground in vain for mossy morsels. This costly and laborious method is having a significant impact on herding practices—and on the animals' independence. However the other option is starvation. When such conditions become routine, reindeer are succumbing—a number from lack of food, others submerging after sinking in streams through thinning ice sheets. In a sense, the art is a tribute to them. "By overlapping of components, in a way I'm introducing the phenomenon to London," says Sara.
Diverging Worldviews
The installation also underscores the sharp difference between the modern understanding of electricity as a resource to be exploited for profit and livelihood and the Sámi outlook of vitality as an natural essence in creatures, individuals, and the environment. Tate Modern's past as a fossil fuel plant is connected to this, as is what the Sámi see as environmental exploitation by Nordic countries. While attempting to be exemplars for renewable energy, Scandinavian countries have clashed with the Sámi over the development of turbine fields, water power facilities, and mines on their traditional territory; the Sámi contend their fundamental freedoms, livelihoods, and traditions are endangered. "It's very difficult being such a tiny group to stand your ground when the reasons are rooted in environmental protection," Sara notes. "Mining practices has appropriated the rhetoric of environmentalism, but still it's just attempting to find more suitable ways to persist in practices of expenditure."
Family Struggles
Sara and her relatives have personally conflicted with the national administration over its tightening rules on reindeer management. In 2016, Sara's sibling initiated a sequence of finally failed lawsuits over the forced culling of his herd, supposedly to stop vegetation depletion. To back him, Sara developed a four-year collection of pieces called Pile O'Sápmi including a huge curtain of four hundred reindeer skulls, which was shown at the 2017's art exhibition Documenta 14 and later obtained by the national institution, where it hangs in the entrance.
Art as Advocacy
For many Sámi, visual expression is the only realm in which they can be listened to by outsiders. In 2022, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|
