Exploring the Aroma of Apprehension: Máret Ánne Sara Revamps Tate's Turbine Hall with Arctic Deer Themed Installation

Visitors to the renowned gallery are familiar to unexpected experiences in its expansive Turbine Hall. They've sunbathed under an simulated sun, glided down amusement rides, and seen automated jellyfish hovering through the air. Yet this marks the initial time they will be venturing themselves in the detailed nasal cavities of a reindeer. The latest creative installation for this huge space—created by Indigenous Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—welcomes visitors into a winding structure modeled after the expanded interior of a reindeer's nose passages. Upon entering, they can stroll around or unwind on reindeer hides, listening on earphones to Sámi elders imparting tales and wisdom.

Why the Nose?

Why choose the nasal structure? It may seem playful, but the installation pays tribute to a rarely recognized biological feat: researchers have discovered that in a fraction of a second, the reindeer's nose can warm the surrounding air it inhales by 80 degrees celsius, enabling the animal to endure in inhospitable Arctic conditions. Enlarging the nose to bigger than a person, Sara notes, "generates a feeling of smallness that you as a human being are not superior over nature." Sara is a former writer, writer for kids, and rights advocate, who hails from a pastoral family in the Norwegian Arctic. "Possibly that creates the possibility to alter your viewpoint or trigger some humility," she continues.

A Tribute to Sámi Culture

The maze-like structure is one of several elements in Sara's immersive art project celebrating the traditions, science, and beliefs of the Sámi, Europe's only Indigenous people. Semi-nomadic, the Sámi count about 100,000 people distributed across the Norwegian north, Finland, Sweden, and the Kola region (an area they call Sápmi). They've faced discrimination, cultural suppression, and suppression of their tongue by all four nations. By focusing on the reindeer, an animal at the core of the Sámi cosmology and founding narrative, the art also draws attention to the group's struggles associated with the global warming, loss of territory, and external control.

Metaphor in Components

On the extended entrance slope, there's a towering, eighty-five-foot formation of skins trapped by electrical wires. It serves as a analogy for the societal frameworks limiting the Sámi. Partly a utility pole, part heavenly staircase, this section of the exhibit, named Goavve-, relates to the Sámi name for an severe climatic event, in which solid coatings of ice develop as varying conditions melt and ice over the snow, trapping the reindeers' main winter sustenance, lichen. The condition is a consequence of climate change, which is occurring up to four times faster in the Polar region than in other regions.

Three years ago, I met with Sara in a remote town during a goavvi winter and joined Sámi pastoralists on their snowmobiles in chilly conditions as they transported containers of supplementary feed on to the exposed Arctic plains to distribute manually. The reindeer gathered round us, pawing the slippery ground in vain for vegetative morsels. This expensive and laborious method is having a severe impact on animal rearing—and on the animals' independence. Yet the other option is starvation. As goavvi winters become commonplace, reindeer are dying—some from hunger, others submerging after sinking in water bodies through thinning ice sheets. In a sense, the art is a tribute to them. "Through the stacking of materials, in a way I'm bringing the goavvi to London," says Sara.

Contrasting Worldviews

The installation also underscores the stark contrast between the industrial view of energy as a commodity to be harnessed for profit and livelihood and the Sámi worldview of vitality as an innate power in creatures, humans, and land. The gallery's past as a coal and oil power station is connected to this, as is what the Sámi consider environmental exploitation by Nordic countries. While attempting to be exemplars for clean sources, Nordic nations have disagreed with the Sámi over the development of wind energy projects, hydroelectric dams, and extraction sites on their ancestral land; the Sámi argue their legal protections, livelihoods, and traditions are threatened. "It's very difficult being such a tiny group to protect your rights when the reasons are rooted in saving the world," Sara notes. "Extractivism has co-opted the rhetoric of environmentalism, but yet it's just attempting to find more suitable ways to maintain patterns of consumption."

Individual Challenges

Sara and her relatives have personally disagreed with the state authorities over its increasingly stringent policies on herding. Previously, Sara's brother undertook a sequence of unsuccessful legal cases over the required reduction of his herd, supposedly to stop vegetation depletion. As a show of solidarity, Sara created a multi-year set of creations named Pile O'Sápmi featuring a huge drape of 400 reindeer skulls, which was exhibited at the the art exhibition Documenta 14 and later acquired by the National Museum of Oslo, where it hangs in the entrance.

Art as Activism

For numerous Indigenous people, art seems the exclusive domain in which they can be understood by the global community. Two years ago, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|