Delving into the Smell of Fear: The Sámi Artist Revamps The Gallery's Exhibition Space with Reindeer Inspired Exhibit
Guests to the renowned gallery are used to surprising experiences in its spacious Turbine Hall. They've basked under an simulated sun, glided down amusement rides, and seen automated jellyfish drifting through the air. But this marks the inaugural time they will be immersing themselves in the detailed nose cavities of a reindeer. The current creative installation for this cavernous space—developed by Native Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—invites patrons into a labyrinthine construction modeled after the expanded interior of a reindeer's nose passages. Inside, they can stroll around or chill out on reindeer hides, listening on earphones to community leaders imparting tales and insights.
Why the Nose?
Why the nose? It could sound quirky, but the artwork honors a rarely recognized scientific wonder: researchers have discovered that in under a second, the reindeer's nose can raise the temperature of the surrounding air it inhales by eighty degrees, helping the creature to survive in harsh Arctic temperatures. Enlarging the nose to bigger than a person, Sara says, "generates a feeling of inferiority that you as a individual are not dominant over nature." Sara is a ex- writer, writer for kids, and land defender, who is from a pastoral family in northern Norway. "Perhaps that generates the chance to change your viewpoint or trigger some humbleness," she adds.
A Tribute to Indigenous Heritage
The maze-like design is among various features in Sara's immersive exhibition celebrating the heritage, understanding, and philosophy of the Sámi, the sole native group in Europe. Traditionally mobile, the Sámi count about 100,000 people ranged across northern Norway, the Finnish Arctic, the Swedish Lapland, and the Russian Arctic (an area they call Sápmi). They've experienced discrimination, forced assimilation, and eradication of their tongue by all four nations. Through highlighting the reindeer, an creature at the center of the Sámi mythology and founding narrative, the work also spotlights the group's issues connected to the climate crisis, loss of territory, and imperialism.
Symbolism in Materials
At the extended access ramp, there's a towering, 26-metre structure of pelts trapped by power and light cables. It serves as a symbol for the political and economic systems constraining the Sámi. Part pylon, part heavenly staircase, this section of the installation, titled Goavve-, points to the Sámi word for an harsh environmental condition, whereby solid sheets of ice form as varying weather liquefy and solidify again the snow, trapping the reindeers' key cold-season food, fungus. The condition is a outcome of climate change, which is happening up to much more rapidly in the Arctic than in other regions.
A few years back, I met with Sara in a remote town during a goavvi winter and joined Sámi herders on their motorized sleds in biting cold as they transported carts of animal nutrition on to the wind-scoured frozen landscape to dispense by hand. The herd gathered round us, digging the frozen ground in futility for vegetative morsels. This costly and labour-intensive procedure is having a drastic impact on animal rearing—and on the animals' natural survival. But the alternative is malnutrition. As these icy periods become routine, reindeer are dying—some from hunger, others drowning after sinking in lakes and rivers through unstable frozen surfaces. On one level, the installation is a memorial to them. "Through the stacking of elements, in a way I'm bringing the goavvi to London," says Sara.
Diverging Belief Systems
This artwork also underscores the stark contrast between the western interpretation of electricity as a commodity to be harnessed for profit and survival and the Sámi worldview of energy as an natural essence in animals, humans, and the environment. Tate Modern's legacy as a fossil fuel plant is linked with this, as is what the Sámi see as green colonialism by Scandinavian states. While attempting to be leaders for sustainable power, Scandinavian countries have locked horns with the Sámi over the construction of windfarms, water power facilities, and mines on their native soil; the Sámi contend their human rights, livelihoods, and way of life are threatened. "It's challenging being such a small minority to stand your ground when the arguments are rooted in saving the world," Sara observes. "Extractivism has adopted the rhetoric of sustainability, but still it's just striving to find better ways to maintain patterns of consumption."
Individual Conflicts
The artist and her relatives have personally conflicted with the state authorities over its tightening rules on animal husbandry. In 2016, Sara's sibling initiated a series of ultimately unsuccessful lawsuits over the mandatory slaughter of his animals, ostensibly to stop excessive feeding. In support, Sara produced a extended collection of artworks called Pile O'Sápmi including a huge screen of four hundred reindeer skulls, which was shown at the 2017 art exhibition Documenta 14 and later purchased by the national institution, where it hangs in the entryway.
Art as Awareness
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