Unveiling the Smell of Apprehension: The Sámi Artist Revamps The Gallery's Turbine Hall with Arctic Deer Influenced Installation

Visitors to the renowned gallery are used to unusual displays in its vast Turbine Hall. They have relaxed under an man-made sun, descended down amusement rides, and seen AI-powered sea creatures floating through the air. Yet this marks the first time they will be engaging themselves in the complex nasal chambers of a reindeer. The newest artistic project for this huge space—designed by Indigenous Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—welcomes patrons into a winding structure inspired by the scaled-up interior of a reindeer's nasal airways. Inside, they can stroll around or unwind on reindeer hides, listening on headphones to community leaders imparting tales and insights.

The Significance of the Nose

Why the nose? It might appear quirky, but the artwork celebrates a rarely recognized scientific wonder: experts have uncovered that in under a second, the reindeer's nose can heat the ambient air it breathes in by 80 degrees celsius, enabling the creature to thrive in harsh Arctic temperatures. Expanding the nose to larger than human size, Sara says, "produces a sense of inferiority that you as a human being are not superior over nature." She is a former writer, young adult author, and land defender, who hails from a herding family in the far north of Norway. "Possibly that creates the possibility to change your perspective or evoke some humility," she states.

A Celebration to Indigenous Heritage

The winding installation is one of several components in Sara's immersive art project honoring the heritage, knowledge, and beliefs of the Sámi, Europe's only Indigenous people. Traditionally mobile, the Sámi count approximately 100,000 people distributed across the Norwegian north, Finland, the Swedish Lapland, and the Russian Arctic (an region they call Sápmi). They've experienced oppression, cultural suppression, and repression of their language by all four countries. By focusing on the reindeer, an creature at the core of the Sámi mythology and origin tale, the art also highlights the people's struggles connected to the climate crisis, loss of territory, and colonialism.

Metaphor in Elements

On the lengthy entry slope, there's a towering, 26-meter formation of skins entangled by utility lines. It serves as a analogy for the governance and financial structures limiting the Sámi. Partly a utility pole, part heavenly staircase, this section of the installation, titled Goavve-, refers to the Sámi name for an harsh environmental condition, wherein solid sheets of ice develop as fluctuating temperatures liquefy and refreeze the snow, encasing the reindeers' main winter sustenance, moss. The condition is a consequence of global heating, which is occurring up to four times faster in the Polar region than in other regions.

Previously, I met with Sara in the Norwegian far north during a severe cold period and accompanied Sámi pastoralists on their snowmobiles in freezing temperatures as they transported trailers of supplementary feed on to the wind-scoured Arctic plains to distribute manually. The herd gathered round us, scratching the icy ground in futility for vegetative bits. This costly and labour-intensive process is having a significant effect on reindeer husbandry—and on the animals' independence. However the choice is malnutrition. As goavvi winters become frequent, reindeer are perishing—some from lack of food, others submerging after plunging into lakes and rivers through unstable frozen surfaces. On one level, the art is a memorial to them. "With the layering of materials, in a way I'm bringing the goavvi to London," says Sara.

Opposing Perspectives

The installation also highlights the stark difference between the modern view of energy as a resource to be utilized for profit and livelihood and the Sámi worldview of vitality as an natural essence in creatures, individuals, and the environment. The gallery's legacy as a fossil fuel plant is linked with this, as is what the Sámi see as environmental exploitation by Nordic countries. As they strive to be leaders for clean sources, Nordic nations have disagreed with the Sámi over the development of windfarms, hydroelectric dams, and extraction sites on their ancestral land; the Sámi argue their legal protections, ways of life, and way of life are threatened. "It's challenging being such a tiny group to defend yourself when the justifications are based on saving the world," Sara comments. "Extractivism has adopted the discourse of ecology, but yet it's just striving to find better ways to persist in habits of expenditure."

Family Conflicts

The artist and her family have personally disagreed with the Norwegian government over its ever-stricter policies on reindeer management. A few years ago, Sara's brother initiated a series of unsuccessful court actions over the mandatory slaughter of his herd, apparently to stop overgrazing. In support, Sara produced a multi-year collection of pieces named Pile O'Sápmi featuring a colossal drape of numerous reindeer skulls, which was displayed at the 2017 event Documenta 14 and later obtained by the National Museum of Oslo, where it is displayed in the entryway.

Art as Activism

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