Delving into this Aroma of Fear: Máret Ánne Sara Revamps The Gallery's Turbine Hall with Arctic Deer Influenced Artwork

Visitors to Tate Modern are familiar to unusual displays in its expansive Turbine Hall. They have relaxed under an artificial sun, descended down spiral slides, and seen robotic jellyfish drifting through the air. Yet this marks the inaugural time they will be venturing themselves in the complex nasal passages of a reindeer. The latest artist commission for this huge space—created by Native Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—encourages visitors into a maze-like construction inspired by the scaled-up inside of a reindeer's nasal airways. Upon entering, they can wander around or unwind on skins, listening on earphones to tribal seniors imparting tales and wisdom.

Focus on the Nasal Passages

Why choose the nasal structure? It may appear quirky, but the artwork honors a little-known biological feat: researchers have uncovered that in a fraction of a second, the reindeer's nose can warm the incoming air it takes in by 80 degrees celsius, enabling the creature to endure in inhospitable Arctic conditions. Expanding the nose to larger than human size, Sara notes, "produces a feeling of smallness that you as a person are not in control over nature." The artist is a former reporter, young adult author, and environmental activist, who is from a herding family in northern Norway. "Perhaps that generates the chance to alter your outlook or evoke some humbleness," she adds.

A Celebration to Indigenous Heritage

The winding structure is part of a elements in Sara's immersive exhibition honoring the heritage, science, and philosophy of the Sámi, the continent's original inhabitants. Partially migratory, the Sámi number roughly 100,000 people ranged across northern Norway, Finland, the Swedish Lapland, and Russia's Kola Peninsula (an territory they call Sápmi). They've endured oppression, integration policies, and eradication of their tongue by all four states. By focusing on the reindeer, an creature at the core of the Sámi cosmology and creation story, the work also draws attention to the people's struggles relating to the environmental emergency, loss of territory, and external control.

Metaphor in Elements

At the long entrance slope, there's a soaring, 26-metre structure of skins entangled by utility lines. It represents a metaphor for the societal frameworks restricting the Sámi. Partly a utility pole, part heavenly staircase, this section of the exhibit, called Goavve-, points to the Sámi word for an severe climatic event, wherein thick sheets of ice appear as changing conditions melt and ice over the snow, locking in the reindeers' key cold-season sustenance, fungus. The condition is a consequence of climate change, which is taking place up to at an accelerated rate in the Polar region than globally.

Three years ago, I met with Sara in Guovdageaidnu during a goavvi winter and joined Sámi pastoralists on their snowmobiles in chilly conditions as they carried containers of animal nutrition on to the wind-scoured Arctic plains to provide by hand. These animals crowded round us, scratching the icy ground in futility for mossy bits. This resource-intensive and laborious procedure is having a drastic influence on reindeer husbandry—and on the animals' self-sufficiency. But the alternative is starvation. When such conditions become frequent, reindeer are succumbing—some from hunger, others drowning after sinking in lakes and rivers through prematurely melting ice. In a sense, the art is a tribute to them. "With the layering of materials, in a way I'm bringing the phenomenon to London," says Sara.

Diverging Worldviews

The sculpture also underscores the clear divergence between the industrial understanding of power as a commodity to be utilized for economic benefit and existence and the Sámi philosophy of life force as an inherent power in animals, humans, and nature. The gallery's history as a industrial facility is linked with this, as is what the Sámi consider eco-imperialism by Nordic countries. In their efforts to be standard bearers for sustainable power, Nordic nations have disagreed with the Sámi over the construction of turbine fields, hydroelectric dams, and digging operations on their traditional territory; the Sámi assert their legal protections, livelihoods, and traditions are endangered. "It's very difficult being such a small minority to protect your rights when the arguments are based on saving the world," Sara comments. "Extractivism has co-opted the discourse of ecology, but nonetheless it's just attempting to find alternative ways to maintain practices of use."

Personal Conflicts

The artist and her relatives have themselves conflicted with the Norwegian government over its tightening regulations on animal husbandry. Previously, Sara's brother undertook a sequence of ultimately unsuccessful legal cases over the mandatory slaughter of his herd, ostensibly to stop excessive feeding. To back him, Sara created a four-year series of pieces titled Pile O'Sápmi featuring a massive screen of 400 animal bones, which was exhibited at the 2017's event Documenta 14 and later obtained by the National Museum of Oslo, where it resides in the entryway.

Creative Expression as Awareness

For many Sámi, visual expression seems the sole sphere in which they can be listened to by the global community. Two years ago, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|