Delving into the Smell of Anxiety: The Sámi Artist Transforms Tate's Exhibition Space with Arctic Deer Themed Exhibit
Attendees to the renowned gallery are familiar to surprising encounters in its vast Turbine Hall. They have relaxed under an man-made sun, slid down helter skelters, and seen automated sea creatures drifting through the air. But this marks the initial time they will be immersing themselves in the detailed nasal passages of a reindeer. The newest artist commission for this huge space—created by Indigenous Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—encourages gallerygoers into a winding design based on the scaled-up inside of a reindeer's nose cavities. Once inside, they can meander around or relax on pelts, tuning in on headphones to Sámi elders telling stories and wisdom.
Why the Nose?
Why choose the nasal structure? It may appear quirky, but the artwork celebrates a little-known scientific wonder: experts have found that in under a second, the reindeer's nose can heat the incoming air it takes in by eighty degrees, allowing the animal to survive in extreme Arctic conditions. Expanding the nose to human-scale dimensions, Sara explains, "creates a sense of inferiority that you as a person are not superior over nature." The artist is a ex- reporter, writer for kids, and land defender, who is from a reindeer-herding family in the Norwegian Arctic. "Perhaps that creates the potential to change your viewpoint or trigger some humbleness," she adds.
A Celebration to Traditional Ways
The maze-like installation is part of a features in Sara's absorbing exhibition honoring the heritage, knowledge, and worldview of the Sámi, the continent's original inhabitants. Partially migratory, the Sámi total approximately 100,000 people spread across northern Norway, Finland, the Swedish Lapland, and the Russian Arctic (an territory they call Sápmi). They've faced oppression, forced assimilation, and eradication of their tongue by all four nations. Through highlighting the reindeer, an creature at the heart of the Sámi cosmology and founding narrative, the work also draws attention to the group's issues connected to the climate crisis, land dispossession, and colonialism.
Meaning in Materials
Along the long entrance slope, there's a looming, 26-meter sculpture of reindeer hides ensnared by power and light cables. It serves as a symbol for the governance and financial structures constraining the Sámi. Part pylon, part heavenly staircase, this section of the artwork, called Goavve-, relates to the Sámi term for an harsh environmental condition, wherein solid layers of ice appear as fluctuating temperatures melt and ice over the snow, locking in the reindeers' primary winter sustenance, lichen. This phenomenon is a outcome of global heating, which is happening up to much more rapidly in the Far North than globally.
Three years ago, I traveled to see Sara in Guovdageaidnu during a severe cold period and accompanied Sámi reindeer keepers on their Arctic vehicles in biting cold as they hauled containers of food pellets on to the exposed tundra to distribute by hand. The herd crowded round us, digging the frozen ground in vain for vegetative morsels. This expensive and laborious procedure is having a severe influence on reindeer husbandry—and on the animals' self-sufficiency. However the choice is death. As these icy periods become frequent, reindeer are dying—a number from starvation, others suffocating after sinking in lakes and rivers through thinning ice sheets. In a sense, the work is a monument to them. "Through the stacking of elements, in a way I'm introducing the goavvi to London," says Sara.
Diverging Belief Systems
The sculpture also emphasizes the stark divergence between the western interpretation of energy as a commodity to be exploited for gain and existence and the Sámi philosophy of energy as an natural life force in creatures, people, and nature. Tate Modern's legacy as a fossil fuel plant is connected to this, as is what the Sámi view as environmental exploitation by Nordic countries. In their efforts to be leaders for renewable energy, Scandinavian countries have clashed with the Sámi over the construction of windfarms, hydroelectric dams, and digging operations on their traditional territory; the Sámi contend their legal protections, ways of life, and way of life are at risk. "It's challenging being such a small minority to protect your rights when the reasons are grounded in global sustainability," Sara notes. "Mining practices has co-opted the language of ecology, but still it's just aiming to find more suitable ways to maintain habits of consumption."
Personal Struggles
The artist and her relatives have personally clashed with the state authorities over its ever-stricter regulations on reindeer management. In 2016, Sara's brother undertook a set of unsuccessful court actions over the mandatory slaughter of his animals, ostensibly to stop vegetation depletion. To back him, Sara produced a extended collection of pieces named Pile O'Sápmi including a massive curtain of numerous animal bones, which was shown at the 2017 show Documenta 14 and later acquired by the National Museum of Oslo, where it is displayed in the lobby.
The Role of Art in Advocacy
Among the community, creative work seems the exclusive sphere in which they can be understood by people of other nations. Two years ago, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|
