Delving into the Smell of Fear: The Sámi Artist Transforms The Gallery's Turbine Hall with Reindeer Inspired Artwork

Visitors to the renowned gallery are used to unexpected experiences in its expansive Turbine Hall. They've basked under an man-made sun, slid down spiral slides, and witnessed AI-powered jellyfish floating through the air. Yet this marks the first time they will be immersing themselves in the intricate nose chambers of a reindeer. The latest artist commission for this cavernous space—developed by Indigenous Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—invites patrons into a maze-like structure based on the enlarged inside of a reindeer's nasal airways. Upon entering, they can meander around or unwind on pelts, tuning in on earphones to Sámi elders sharing stories and wisdom.

The Significance of the Nose

Why the nose? It might seem whimsical, but the installation pays tribute to a little-known scientific wonder: experts have found that in a fraction of a second, the reindeer's nose can warm the incoming air it breathes in by 80 degrees celsius, helping the creature to endure in harsh Arctic conditions. Expanding the nose to larger than human size, Sara says, "creates a feeling of insignificance that you as a individual are not dominant over nature." Sara is a ex- journalist, writer for kids, and rights advocate, who hails from a herding family in the Norwegian Arctic. "Possibly that fosters the chance to alter your perspective or trigger some humbleness," she states.

A Celebration to Traditional Ways

The maze-like installation is part of a features in Sara's engaging art project showcasing the traditions, science, and beliefs of the Sámi, the sole native group in Europe. Semi-nomadic, the Sámi total approximately 100,000 people spread across the Norwegian north, Finland, Sweden, and Russia's Kola Peninsula (an area they call Sápmi). They have faced oppression, integration policies, and suppression of their dialect by all four countries. By focusing on the reindeer, an animal at the heart of the Sámi cosmology and origin tale, the installation also spotlights the community's issues associated with the global warming, land dispossession, and colonialism.

Meaning in Materials

Along the extended access slope, there's a towering, eighty-five-foot sculpture of skins entangled by power and light cables. It can be read as a analogy for the political and economic systems constraining the Sámi. Partly a utility pole, part celestial ladder, this component of the installation, called Goavve-, refers to the Sámi term for an harsh environmental condition, whereby thick coatings of ice develop as varying weather liquefy and refreeze the snow, trapping the reindeers' key winter sustenance, fungus. This phenomenon is a outcome of climate change, which is taking place up to much more rapidly in the Polar region than in other regions.

Previously, I visited Sara in the Norwegian far north during a icy season and went with Sámi reindeer keepers on their motorized sleds in chilly conditions as they transported carts of food pellets on to the wind-scoured tundra to provide through labor. The herd gathered round us, pawing the icy ground in vain for mossy pieces. This expensive and labour-intensive process is having a drastic effect on herding practices—and on the animals' self-sufficiency. Yet the choice is death. As goavvi winters become commonplace, reindeer are perishing—some from hunger, others drowning after plunging into lakes and rivers through prematurely melting ice. To some extent, the art is a monument to them. "By overlapping of elements, in a way I'm introducing the condition to London," says Sara.

Opposing Worldviews

The sculpture also underscores the sharp divergence between the modern interpretation of power as a resource to be harnessed for economic benefit and livelihood and the Sámi outlook of vitality as an inherent life force in creatures, humans, and nature. This venue's past as a coal and oil power station is tied up in this, as is what the Sámi see as environmental exploitation by Scandinavian states. As they strive to be leaders for clean sources, Scandinavian countries have clashed with the Sámi over the building of wind energy projects, water power facilities, and extraction sites on their native soil; the Sámi argue their fundamental freedoms, livelihoods, and way of life are endangered. "It's challenging being such a small minority to stand your ground when the justifications are rooted in environmental protection," Sara observes. "Extractivism has appropriated the discourse of environmentalism, but still it's just striving to find more suitable ways to continue practices of consumption."

Family Challenges

She and her kin have personally disagreed with the state authorities over its tightening rules on animal husbandry. A few years ago, Sara's sibling embarked on a sequence of unsuccessful legal cases over the required reduction of his animals, supposedly to stop excessive feeding. To back him, Sara created a extended series of creations called Pile O'Sápmi including a huge curtain of numerous cranial remains, which was exhibited at the 2017 art exhibition Documenta 14 and later acquired by the national institution, where it resides in the entrance.

Creative Expression as Activism

For many Sámi, visual expression is the sole domain in which they can be listened to by outsiders. Recently, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|