Delving into this Smell of Fear: The Sámi Artist Transforms Tate's Exhibition Space with Arctic Deer Influenced Artwork
Visitors to Tate Modern are used to unusual experiences in its vast Turbine Hall. They've relaxed under an man-made sun, glided down amusement rides, and seen robotic jellyfish drifting through the air. However this marks the first time they will be venturing themselves in the complex nasal passages of a reindeer. The latest creative installation for this immense space—created by Native Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—welcomes patrons into a winding structure modeled after the scaled-up interior of a reindeer's nose cavities. Upon entering, they can meander around or chill out on skins, listening on headphones to tribal seniors telling tales and insights.
Why the Nose?
Why choose the nasal structure? It may sound playful, but the exhibit honors a obscure scientific wonder: scientists have discovered that in a fraction of a second, the reindeer's nose can warm the ambient air it breathes in by eighty degrees, enabling the creature to endure in harsh Arctic climates. Scaling the nose to larger than human size, Sara notes, "produces a feeling of inferiority that you as a individual are not dominant over nature." Sara is a ex- writer, children's author, and land defender, who comes from a herding family in northern Norway. "Possibly that fosters the chance to alter your viewpoint or spark some modesty," she adds.
An Homage to Sámi Culture
The maze-like design is among various elements in Sara's absorbing exhibition showcasing the culture, science, and beliefs of the Sámi, the sole native group in Europe. Semi-nomadic, the Sámi total about 100,000 people ranged across northern Norway, the Finnish Arctic, the Swedish Lapland, and the Kola region (an region they call Sápmi). They have experienced oppression, forced assimilation, and repression of their tongue by all four states. Through highlighting the reindeer, an animal at the core of the Sámi cosmology and creation story, the installation also spotlights the group's issues associated with the global warming, land dispossession, and imperialism.
Meaning in Materials
On the extended entrance ramp, there's a soaring, 26-meter sculpture of reindeer hides trapped by power and light cables. It can be read as a analogy for the political and economic systems constraining the Sámi. Like an electrical tower, part spiritual ascent, this section of the exhibit, named Goavve-, relates to the Sámi name for an severe climatic event, in which solid sheets of ice form as changing weather thaw and ice over the snow, trapping the reindeers' primary cold-season food, lichen. The condition is a result of climate change, which is happening up to much more rapidly in the Far North than globally.
Previously, I visited Sara in a remote town during a goavvi winter and accompanied Sámi herders on their motorized sleds in freezing temperatures as they hauled carts of animal nutrition on to the exposed Arctic plains to dispense through labor. The reindeer gathered round us, digging the frozen ground in vain attempts for lichen-covered pieces. This resource-intensive and demanding method is having a significant effect on herding practices—and on the animals' self-sufficiency. However the alternative is death. As these icy periods become frequent, reindeer are succumbing—a number from starvation, others drowning after sinking in water bodies through prematurely melting ice. To some extent, the art is a memorial to them. "With the layering of components, in a way I'm transporting the condition to London," says Sara.
Diverging Worldviews
This artwork also emphasizes the sharp divergence between the modern understanding of electricity as a commodity to be harnessed for gain and livelihood and the Sámi outlook of life force as an natural life force in creatures, humans, and nature. This venue's history as a industrial facility is linked with this, as is what the Sámi see as environmental exploitation by Scandinavian states. While attempting to be leaders for renewable energy, Nordic nations have disagreed with the Sámi over the construction of turbine fields, river barriers, and extraction sites on their native soil; the Sámi contend their fundamental freedoms, ways of life, and way of life are at risk. "It's very difficult being such a limited population to defend yourself when the reasons are based on global sustainability," Sara notes. "Mining practices has adopted the language of sustainability, but still it's just attempting to find alternative ways to continue patterns of expenditure."
Family Struggles
She and her kin have personally clashed with the state authorities over its tightening regulations on herding. Previously, Sara's brother embarked on a sequence of finally failed lawsuits over the required reduction of his herd, supposedly to stop vegetation depletion. To back him, Sara developed a four-year series of artworks named Pile O'Sápmi comprising a colossal curtain of numerous reindeer skulls, which was displayed at the 2017 art exhibition Documenta 14 and later purchased by the public gallery, where it hangs in the entryway.
Art as Advocacy
For many Sámi, creative work is the exclusive realm in which they can be heard by people of other nations. In 2022, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|
