Unveiling the Scent of Fear: Máret Ánne Sara Reimagines Tate's Turbine Hall with Reindeer Themed Artwork

Visitors to the renowned gallery are familiar to unusual experiences in its expansive Turbine Hall. They've basked under an simulated sun, slid down spiral slides, and observed automated sea creatures floating through the air. But this marks the inaugural time they will be immersing themselves in the intricate nose passages of a reindeer. The current creative installation for this huge space—designed by Indigenous Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—welcomes visitors into a winding design inspired by the scaled-up interior of a reindeer's nasal airways. Inside, they can wander around or unwind on pelts, tuning in on headphones to community leaders telling tales and knowledge.

Focus on the Nasal Passages

Why choose the nasal structure? It could appear quirky, but the installation pays tribute to a little-known scientific wonder: researchers have found that in under a second, the reindeer's nose can raise the temperature of the incoming air it takes in by 80°C, helping the creature to survive in harsh Arctic conditions. Expanding the nose to larger than human size, Sara says, "creates a sense of smallness that you as a individual are not in control over nature." The artist is a ex- writer, writer for kids, and rights advocate, who comes from a herding family in northern Norway. "Perhaps that generates the possibility to alter your perspective or evoke some modesty," she adds.

An Homage to Sámi Culture

The labyrinthine design is part of a features in Sara's immersive art project celebrating the heritage, science, and beliefs of the Sámi, the continent's original inhabitants. Semi-nomadic, the Sámi count about 100,000 people ranged across northern Norway, Finland, Sweden, and the Russian Arctic (an region they call Sápmi). They have experienced persecution, integration policies, and suppression of their dialect by all four nations. By focusing on the reindeer, an creature at the heart of the Sámi cosmology and origin tale, the work also spotlights the group's issues associated with the environmental emergency, loss of territory, and imperialism.

Meaning in Materials

On the extended access ramp, there's a looming, 26-metre sculpture of reindeer hides trapped by utility lines. It can be read as a metaphor for the governance and financial structures constraining the Sámi. Part pylon, part spiritual ascent, this component of the exhibit, named Goavve-, relates to the Sámi word for an harsh environmental condition, wherein dense layers of ice form as changing conditions liquefy and refreeze the snow, trapping the reindeers' primary winter nourishment, lichen. Goavvi is a consequence of global heating, which is taking place up to four times faster in the Polar region than elsewhere.

Three years ago, I traveled to see Sara in Guovdageaidnu during a goavvi winter and joined Sámi pastoralists on their motorized sleds in freezing temperatures as they carried carts of animal nutrition on to the exposed Arctic plains to distribute through labor. The reindeer surrounded round us, pawing the icy ground in vain for mossy morsels. This expensive and labour-intensive method is having a severe influence on herding practices—and on the animals' independence. But the choice is malnutrition. As goavvi winters become routine, reindeer are perishing—a number from hunger, others submerging after plunging into water bodies through prematurely melting ice. On one level, the installation is a monument to them. "With the layering of materials, in a way I'm introducing the goavvi to London," says Sara.

Opposing Perspectives

This artwork also underscores the clear difference between the western understanding of power as a asset to be exploited for economic benefit and existence and the Sámi philosophy of vitality as an inherent life force in animals, people, and nature. This venue's history as a fossil fuel plant is connected to this, as is what the Sámi see as eco-imperialism by Nordic countries. As they strive to be leaders for clean sources, these states have disagreed with the Sámi over the development of wind energy projects, river barriers, and extraction sites on their native soil; the Sámi assert their fundamental freedoms, incomes, and culture are at risk. "It's very difficult being such a tiny group to defend yourself when the justifications are based on saving the world," Sara observes. "Resource exploitation has appropriated the discourse of sustainability, but yet it's just aiming to find better ways to continue habits of expenditure."

Individual Challenges

The artist and her kin have themselves conflicted with the national administration over its tightening regulations on herding. Previously, Sara's brother embarked on a sequence of finally failed lawsuits over the forced culling of his animals, apparently to stop vegetation depletion. To back him, Sara produced a multi-year series of pieces titled Pile O'Sápmi including a massive screen of numerous animal bones, which was exhibited at the 2017's art exhibition Documenta 14 and later acquired by the national institution, where it is displayed in the entryway.

Creative Expression as Activism

Among the community, visual expression is the exclusive sphere in which they can be heard by people of other nations. In 2022, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|