Unveiling this Smell of Anxiety: The Sámi Artist Reimagines The Gallery's Exhibition Space with Reindeer Themed Installation

Visitors to the renowned gallery are accustomed to surprising experiences in its vast Turbine Hall. They've basked under an man-made sun, slid down spiral slides, and observed AI-powered jellyfish floating through the air. However this marks the inaugural time they will be venturing themselves in the complex nose cavities of a reindeer. The latest artist commission for this immense space—developed by Native Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—encourages patrons into a winding construction inspired by the enlarged interior of a reindeer's nose airways. Once inside, they can stroll around or chill out on pelts, listening on earphones to community leaders imparting narratives and wisdom.

Why the Nose?

What's the focus on the nose? It might sound playful, but the artwork pays tribute to a obscure scientific wonder: scientists have discovered that in less than one second, the reindeer's nose can raise the temperature of the incoming air it inhales by eighty degrees, helping the animal to thrive in extreme Arctic climates. Scaling the nose to human-scale dimensions, Sara explains, "generates a feeling of smallness that you as a person are not dominant over nature." The artist is a former writer, children's author, and environmental activist, who hails from a herding family in the Norwegian Arctic. "Perhaps that generates the chance to change your viewpoint or evoke some humbleness," she continues.

An Homage to Sámi Culture

The winding structure is one of several components in Sara's engaging commission honoring the heritage, understanding, and worldview of the Sámi, Europe's only Indigenous people. Semi-nomadic, the Sámi total about 100,000 people ranged across the Norwegian north, Finland, the Swedish Lapland, and the Russian Arctic (an area they call Sápmi). They've experienced persecution, forced assimilation, and eradication of their tongue by all four states. By focusing on the reindeer, an animal at the heart of the Sámi cosmology and creation story, the work also highlights the people's struggles associated with the climate crisis, property rights, and imperialism.

Meaning in Elements

Along the extended entrance ramp, there's a soaring, 26-meter formation of skins trapped by electrical wires. It represents a analogy for the governance and financial structures restricting the Sámi. Like an electrical tower, part spiritual ascent, this part of the artwork, named Goavve-, relates to the Sámi word for an extreme weather phenomenon, whereby dense sheets of ice develop as varying weather melt and solidify again the snow, locking in the reindeers' key cold-season sustenance, lichen. This phenomenon is a result of planetary warming, which is occurring up to much more rapidly in the Polar region than in other regions.

Previously, I traveled to see Sara in the Norwegian far north during a severe cold period and went with Sámi herders on their Arctic vehicles in biting cold as they transported containers of animal nutrition on to the wind-scoured Arctic plains to dispense through labor. The reindeer gathered round us, digging the icy ground in futility for mossy pieces. This costly and laborious method is having a drastic effect on herding practices—and on the animals' self-sufficiency. But the alternative is malnutrition. When such conditions become frequent, reindeer are perishing—some from hunger, others drowning after plunging into lakes and rivers through prematurely melting ice. To some extent, the work is a tribute to them. "With the layering of materials, in a way I'm introducing the phenomenon to London," says Sara.

Diverging Belief Systems

The sculpture also highlights the clear difference between the modern interpretation of electricity as a asset to be harnessed for profit and survival and the Sámi outlook of vitality as an inherent essence in creatures, humans, and the environment. Tate Modern's past as a coal and oil power station is tied up in this, as is what the Sámi view as environmental exploitation by Scandinavian states. As they strive to be exemplars for renewable energy, these states have disagreed with the Sámi over the construction of windfarms, hydroelectric dams, and extraction sites on their native soil; the Sámi argue their human rights, incomes, and culture are endangered. "It's hard being such a limited population to defend yourself when the justifications are grounded in global sustainability," Sara comments. "Mining practices has co-opted the language of sustainability, but still it's just attempting to find alternative ways to maintain habits of use."

Personal Conflicts

Sara and her family have themselves disagreed with the state authorities over its ever-stricter regulations on reindeer management. A few years ago, Sara's brother embarked on a sequence of unsuccessful court actions over the mandatory slaughter of his herd, ostensibly to stop vegetation depletion. In support, Sara produced a four-year collection of creations titled Pile O'Sápmi featuring a colossal curtain of numerous cranial remains, which was exhibited at the the show Documenta 14 and later acquired by the public gallery, where it resides in the lobby.

The Role of Art in Advocacy

Among the community, visual expression seems the exclusive realm in which they can be heard by people of other nations. Two years ago, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|