Exploring this Smell of Anxiety: Máret Ánne Sara Transforms Tate's Turbine Hall with Reindeer Influenced Installation

Guests to Tate Modern are familiar to surprising displays in its spacious Turbine Hall. They've relaxed under an artificial sun, slid down spiral slides, and witnessed AI-powered sea creatures floating through the air. Yet this marks the first time they will be engaging themselves in the complex nasal chambers of a reindeer. The newest artistic project for this immense space—developed by Native Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—invites gallerygoers into a labyrinthine design modeled after the enlarged inside of a reindeer's nasal passages. Once inside, they can meander around or chill out on pelts, tuning in on earphones to community leaders sharing tales and knowledge.

The Significance of the Nose

Why choose the nasal structure? It could appear quirky, but the artwork honors a rarely recognized natural marvel: researchers have uncovered that in less than one second, the reindeer's nose can raise the temperature of the surrounding air it inhales by 80°C, allowing the animal to survive in extreme Arctic climates. Enlarging the nose to bigger than a person, Sara notes, "creates a perception of insignificance that you as a individual are not in control over nature." Sara is a former reporter, writer for kids, and rights advocate, who hails from a reindeer-herding family in the Norwegian Arctic. "Maybe that creates the possibility to shift your perspective or evoke some modesty," she continues.

An Homage to Sámi Culture

The maze-like structure is among various components in Sara's absorbing art project honoring the heritage, understanding, and beliefs of the Sámi, the sole native group in Europe. Semi-nomadic, the Sámi count about 100,000 people spread across northern Norway, the Finnish Arctic, Sweden, and the Kola region (an region they call Sápmi). They have endured oppression, forced assimilation, and eradication of their dialect by all four nations. By focusing on the reindeer, an creature at the center of the Sámi belief system and founding narrative, the art also draws attention to the people's challenges connected to the environmental emergency, land dispossession, and imperialism.

Symbolism in Elements

On the extended entry slope, there's a looming, eighty-five-foot structure of skins trapped by utility lines. It represents a analogy for the political and economic systems constraining the Sámi. Part pylon, part celestial ladder, this part of the artwork, called Goavve-, points to the Sámi term for an extreme weather phenomenon, whereby solid coatings of ice develop as varying conditions thaw and refreeze the snow, trapping the reindeers' key cold-season food, moss. Goavvi is a result of global heating, which is taking place up to four times faster in the Arctic than elsewhere.

A few years back, I visited Sara in a remote town during a goavvi winter and joined Sámi pastoralists on their snowmobiles in freezing temperatures as they transported carts of animal nutrition on to the wind-scoured tundra to distribute through labor. These animals crowded round us, digging the icy ground in vain attempts for vegetative morsels. This resource-intensive and labour-intensive procedure is having a significant impact on animal rearing—and on the animals' natural survival. But the choice is starvation. As these icy periods become frequent, reindeer are succumbing—some from starvation, others suffocating after plunging into streams through unstable frozen surfaces. In a sense, the work is a monument to them. "By overlapping of components, in a way I'm transporting the condition to London," says Sara.

Contrasting Belief Systems

This artwork also highlights the sharp contrast between the industrial understanding of power as a asset to be utilized for economic benefit and livelihood and the Sámi philosophy of vitality as an natural essence in animals, humans, and nature. Tate Modern's past as a fossil fuel plant is tied up in this, as is what the Sámi consider environmental exploitation by Scandinavian states. While attempting to be leaders for sustainable power, these states have locked horns with the Sámi over the construction of windfarms, river barriers, and mines on their ancestral land; the Sámi argue their legal protections, livelihoods, and traditions are at risk. "It's very difficult being such a tiny group to defend yourself when the reasons are rooted in saving the world," Sara notes. "Extractivism has adopted the language of sustainability, but yet it's just aiming to find alternative ways to maintain habits of consumption."

Personal Struggles

She and her kin have personally disagreed with the Norwegian government over its ever-stricter regulations on animal husbandry. A few years ago, Sara's brother embarked on a sequence of finally failed lawsuits over the required reduction of his animals, apparently to stop overgrazing. In support, Sara created a four-year series of creations named Pile O'Sápmi featuring a huge curtain of four hundred cranial remains, which was exhibited at the 2017 show Documenta 14 and later acquired by the national institution, where it is displayed in the entrance.

Creative Expression as Awareness

For many Sámi, visual expression appears the only domain in which they can be heard by the global community. In 2022, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|