Unveiling the Smell of Anxiety: Máret Ánne Sara Transforms Tate's Turbine Hall with Arctic Deer Inspired Installation

Attendees to the renowned gallery are used to unusual experiences in its spacious Turbine Hall. They've relaxed under an man-made sun, descended down spiral slides, and observed automated jellyfish hovering through the air. But this marks the inaugural time they will be engaging themselves in the intricate nasal chambers of a reindeer. The newest artistic project for this cavernous space—developed by Native Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—encourages visitors into a maze-like structure inspired by the enlarged inside of a reindeer's nasal passages. Once inside, they can meander around or relax on pelts, listening on headphones to Sámi elders sharing stories and wisdom.

Focus on the Nasal Passages

What's the focus on the nose? It could sound whimsical, but the artwork honors a rarely recognized scientific wonder: researchers have discovered that in a fraction of a second, the reindeer's nose can raise the temperature of the ambient air it inhales by eighty degrees, enabling the creature to thrive in harsh Arctic temperatures. Enlarging the nose to bigger than a person, Sara notes, "produces a sense of smallness that you as a person are not in control over nature." Sara is a former writer, writer for kids, and rights advocate, who comes from a reindeer-herding family in northern Norway. "Maybe that creates the possibility to alter your viewpoint or trigger some humility," she continues.

A Celebration to Indigenous Heritage

The maze-like structure is part of a components in Sara's absorbing art project honoring the culture, knowledge, and worldview of the Sámi, Europe's only Indigenous people. Partially migratory, the Sámi total approximately 100,000 people ranged across northern Norway, Finland, Sweden, and the Kola region (an territory they call Sápmi). They have endured persecution, forced assimilation, and eradication of their tongue by all four states. By focusing on the reindeer, an creature at the center of the Sámi mythology and origin tale, the installation also draws attention to the group's challenges relating to the climate crisis, property rights, and external control.

Metaphor in Materials

On the long entry ramp, there's a soaring, eighty-five-foot structure of reindeer hides trapped by utility lines. It can be read as a metaphor for the governance and financial structures constraining the Sámi. Like an electrical tower, part heavenly staircase, this component of the exhibit, titled Goavve-, refers to the Sámi term for an harsh environmental condition, whereby solid coatings of ice form as changing temperatures thaw and refreeze the snow, trapping the reindeers' key cold-season food, fungus. The condition is a result of climate change, which is happening up to at an accelerated rate in the Arctic than elsewhere.

Three years ago, I traveled to see Sara in Guovdageaidnu during a severe cold period and accompanied Sámi herders on their snowmobiles in biting cold as they hauled containers of supplementary feed on to the barren frozen landscape to dispense manually. These animals surrounded round us, digging the frozen ground in futility for lichen-covered bits. This resource-intensive and laborious process is having a significant influence on reindeer husbandry—and on the animals' independence. But the alternative is malnutrition. When such conditions become frequent, reindeer are perishing—a number from hunger, others submerging after sinking in water bodies through thinning ice sheets. To some extent, the art is a tribute to them. "Through the stacking of components, in a way I'm transporting the goavvi to London," says Sara.

Diverging Perspectives

The installation also emphasizes the clear difference between the western view of power as a asset to be exploited for economic benefit and existence and the Sámi worldview of vitality as an inherent power in creatures, individuals, and the environment. Tate Modern's legacy as a fossil fuel plant is linked with this, as is what the Sámi view as eco-imperialism by Nordic countries. While attempting to be exemplars for clean sources, Nordic nations have disagreed with the Sámi over the construction of windfarms, river barriers, and extraction sites on their ancestral land; the Sámi argue their human rights, ways of life, and traditions are endangered. "It's hard being such a small minority to stand your ground when the reasons are based on global sustainability," Sara notes. "Resource exploitation has appropriated the rhetoric of ecology, but still it's just attempting to find more suitable ways to persist in practices of consumption."

Family Struggles

She and her relatives have themselves conflicted with the national administration over its ever-stricter policies on animal husbandry. In 2016, Sara's brother initiated a set of ultimately unsuccessful legal cases over the forced culling of his animals, supposedly to stop overgrazing. To back him, Sara developed a multi-year series of creations called Pile O'Sápmi featuring a massive drape of numerous reindeer skulls, which was exhibited at the the event Documenta 14 and later obtained by the national institution, where it hangs in the entryway.

The Role of Art in Awareness

For many Sámi, art seems the only sphere in which they can be understood by outsiders. Two years ago, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|