Delving into the Scent of Anxiety: Máret Ánne Sara Transforms Tate's Exhibition Space with Reindeer Influenced Installation

Visitors to Tate Modern are used to surprising encounters in its spacious Turbine Hall. They have basked under an artificial sun, glided down spiral slides, and witnessed AI-powered jellyfish floating through the air. Yet this marks the first time they will be engaging themselves in the complex nose chambers of a reindeer. The current creative installation for this cavernous space—developed by Indigenous Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—encourages patrons into a labyrinthine construction based on the scaled-up inside of a reindeer's nose passages. Upon entering, they can stroll around or relax on reindeer hides, listening on earphones to tribal seniors telling narratives and wisdom.

Focus on the Nasal Passages

What's the focus on the nose? It may seem playful, but the artwork honors a rarely recognized scientific wonder: experts have found that in less than one second, the reindeer's nose can heat the incoming air it breathes in by 80°C, enabling the animal to survive in harsh Arctic conditions. Enlarging the nose to larger than human size, Sara says, "produces a perception of smallness that you as a person are not superior over nature." Sara is a former journalist, children's author, and land defender, who comes from a herding family in northern Norway. "Perhaps that creates the possibility to shift your outlook or spark some humbleness," she states.

A Tribute to Traditional Ways

The maze-like installation is part of a elements in Sara's absorbing commission celebrating the culture, science, and beliefs of the Sámi, the sole native group in Europe. Partially migratory, the Sámi number approximately 100,000 people ranged across northern Norway, the Finnish Arctic, the Swedish Lapland, and the Kola region (an area they call Sápmi). They've experienced discrimination, cultural suppression, and repression of their language by all four states. By focusing on the reindeer, an creature at the heart of the Sámi belief system and origin tale, the installation also highlights the community's issues relating to the climate crisis, land dispossession, and imperialism.

Symbolism in Elements

At the lengthy access incline, there's a towering, 26-meter structure of skins trapped by power and light cables. It serves as a analogy for the governance and financial structures constraining the Sámi. Part pylon, part heavenly staircase, this section of the installation, named Goavve-, refers to the Sámi name for an harsh environmental condition, in which thick coatings of ice appear as fluctuating conditions liquefy and ice over the snow, locking in the reindeers' main cold-season food, fungus. This phenomenon is a result of global heating, which is happening up to much more rapidly in the Far North than elsewhere.

Previously, I met with Sara in Guovdageaidnu during a severe cold period and accompanied Sámi reindeer keepers on their snowmobiles in biting cold as they transported carts of animal nutrition on to the wind-scoured tundra to provide through labor. These animals surrounded round us, scratching the slippery ground in vain attempts for vegetative bits. This resource-intensive and labour-intensive method is having a severe influence on animal rearing—and on the animals' natural survival. Yet the other option is starvation. As these icy periods become frequent, reindeer are dying—a number from hunger, others submerging after falling into water bodies through prematurely melting ice. On one level, the installation is a tribute to them. "Through the stacking of materials, in a way I'm transporting the phenomenon to London," says Sara.

Contrasting Worldviews

This artwork also highlights the clear difference between the modern interpretation of energy as a commodity to be utilized for gain and livelihood and the Sámi worldview of vitality as an natural power in animals, people, and land. Tate Modern's legacy as a fossil fuel plant is tied up in this, as is what the Sámi see as eco-imperialism by Nordic countries. In their efforts to be standard bearers for renewable energy, Scandinavian countries have clashed with the Sámi over the development of wind energy projects, hydroelectric dams, and mines on their native soil; the Sámi contend their human rights, incomes, and traditions are endangered. "It's challenging being such a limited population to protect your rights when the justifications are rooted in global sustainability," Sara notes. "Mining practices has co-opted the rhetoric of ecology, but yet it's just aiming to find more suitable ways to continue patterns of expenditure."

Individual Struggles

Sara and her relatives have personally clashed with the Norwegian government over its ever-stricter rules on animal husbandry. A few years ago, Sara's brother undertook a set of ultimately unsuccessful legal cases over the forced culling of his livestock, supposedly to stop vegetation depletion. In support, Sara developed a multi-year set of creations titled Pile O'Sápmi including a huge drape of 400 animal bones, which was exhibited at the the art exhibition Documenta 14 and later obtained by the National Museum of Oslo, where it hangs in the entryway.

The Role of Art in Advocacy

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