Delving into this Scent of Anxiety: The Sámi Artist Transforms Tate's Exhibition Space with Reindeer Inspired Artwork
Guests to Tate Modern are accustomed to unusual displays in its expansive Turbine Hall. They've sunbathed under an man-made sun, glided down helter skelters, and seen AI-powered jellyfish hovering through the air. Yet this marks the inaugural time they will be venturing themselves in the intricate nose chambers of a reindeer. The current artist commission for this immense space—developed by Native Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—encourages patrons into a winding design inspired by the expanded inside of a reindeer's nose passages. Inside, they can meander around or chill out on reindeer hides, tuning in on earphones to Sámi elders sharing narratives and knowledge.
Focus on the Nasal Passages
Why the nose? It might appear quirky, but the artwork pays tribute to a obscure scientific wonder: scientists have found that in under a second, the reindeer's nose can warm the ambient air it inhales by 80 degrees celsius, allowing the animal to survive in harsh Arctic climates. Scaling the nose to larger than human size, Sara says, "produces a sense of insignificance that you as a person are not in control over nature." The artist is a former journalist, young adult author, and land defender, who is from a pastoral family in the Norwegian Arctic. "Perhaps that generates the chance to shift your outlook or trigger some humbleness," she adds.
A Celebration to Traditional Ways
The labyrinthine installation is one of several features in Sara's engaging exhibition honoring the culture, understanding, and worldview of the Sámi, the continent's original inhabitants. Partially migratory, the Sámi count approximately 100,000 people ranged across the Norwegian north, the Finnish Arctic, the Swedish Lapland, and Russia's Kola Peninsula (an region they call Sápmi). They have experienced persecution, forced assimilation, and suppression of their tongue by all four countries. By focusing on the reindeer, an animal at the core of the Sámi cosmology and origin tale, the installation also draws attention to the people's challenges relating to the global warming, loss of territory, and colonialism.
Metaphor in Elements
At the lengthy access ramp, there's a looming, 26-metre formation of reindeer hides ensnared by power and light cables. It represents a analogy for the societal frameworks constraining the Sámi. Like an electrical tower, part spiritual ascent, this part of the installation, called Goavve-, points to the Sámi name for an harsh environmental condition, wherein dense sheets of ice appear as varying temperatures melt and ice over the snow, trapping the reindeers' key winter nourishment, fungus. Goavvi is a result of planetary warming, which is taking place up to much more rapidly in the Arctic than elsewhere.
A few years back, I visited Sara in a remote town during a icy season and joined Sámi reindeer keepers on their Arctic vehicles in chilly conditions as they carried trailers of food pellets on to the wind-scoured tundra to dispense manually. The reindeer surrounded round us, pawing the icy ground in vain for vegetative morsels. This expensive and laborious procedure is having a significant impact on reindeer husbandry—and on the animals' natural survival. But the choice is starvation. As these icy periods become routine, reindeer are succumbing—some from hunger, others suffocating after sinking in water bodies through prematurely melting ice. On one level, the work is a monument to them. "Through the stacking of components, in a way I'm bringing the condition to London," says Sara.
Diverging Worldviews
This artwork also highlights the sharp contrast between the modern view of electricity as a asset to be exploited for gain and livelihood and the Sámi philosophy of life force as an natural power in creatures, humans, and land. This venue's legacy as a coal and oil power station is linked with this, as is what the Sámi consider eco-imperialism by regional governments. As they strive to be leaders for renewable energy, Scandinavian countries have locked horns with the Sámi over the building of wind energy projects, water power facilities, and mines on their ancestral land; the Sámi contend their fundamental freedoms, ways of life, and way of life are endangered. "It's challenging being such a small minority to defend yourself when the reasons are rooted in environmental protection," Sara notes. "Extractivism has co-opted the discourse of environmentalism, but nonetheless it's just attempting to find better ways to maintain patterns of consumption."
Family Struggles
The artist and her kin have personally conflicted with the national administration over its increasingly stringent policies on herding. A few years ago, Sara's sibling embarked on a set of unsuccessful court actions over the mandatory slaughter of his herd, apparently to stop overgrazing. To back him, Sara produced a extended collection of creations called Pile O'Sápmi featuring a colossal curtain of four hundred cranial remains, which was shown at the the show Documenta 14 and later acquired by the national institution, where it hangs in the entryway.
Creative Expression as Activism
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