Delving into the Smell of Anxiety: The Sámi Artist Reimagines The Gallery's Turbine Hall with Arctic Deer Influenced Artwork

Guests to the renowned gallery are accustomed to unexpected displays in its spacious Turbine Hall. They have basked under an man-made sun, glided down amusement rides, and observed automated jellyfish floating through the air. However this marks the first time they will be venturing themselves in the intricate nose chambers of a reindeer. The latest artist commission for this cavernous space—designed by Native Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—welcomes gallerygoers into a maze-like structure inspired by the scaled-up interior of a reindeer's nasal airways. Inside, they can meander around or chill out on pelts, listening on earphones to community leaders imparting narratives and knowledge.

Why the Nose?

Why choose the nasal structure? It could seem quirky, but the exhibit pays tribute to a rarely recognized natural marvel: researchers have discovered that in less than one second, the reindeer's nose can warm the ambient air it inhales by 80°C, helping the creature to thrive in inhospitable Arctic conditions. Enlarging the nose to bigger than a person, Sara explains, "generates a feeling of smallness that you as a human being are not superior over nature." She is a ex- reporter, children's author, and land defender, who is from a pastoral family in northern Norway. "Maybe that generates the potential to shift your outlook or spark some humbleness," she adds.

A Celebration to Indigenous Heritage

The winding installation is one of several features in Sara's absorbing exhibition celebrating the traditions, understanding, and philosophy of the Sámi, the sole native group in Europe. Partially migratory, the Sámi total roughly 100,000 people spread across the Norwegian north, the Finnish Arctic, Sweden, and the Kola region (an territory they call Sápmi). They have experienced persecution, forced assimilation, and eradication of their language by all four states. By focusing on the reindeer, an animal at the center of the Sámi cosmology and founding narrative, the art also draws attention to the people's struggles connected to the environmental emergency, land dispossession, and imperialism.

Metaphor in Components

On the lengthy entry slope, there's a soaring, 26-meter structure of pelts entangled by electrical wires. It represents a metaphor for the governance and financial structures limiting the Sámi. Part pylon, part heavenly staircase, this part of the installation, named Goavve-, relates to the Sámi name for an severe climatic event, whereby solid layers of ice develop as fluctuating temperatures thaw and refreeze the snow, encasing the reindeers' key winter sustenance, lichen. Goavvi is a result of climate change, which is taking place up to much more rapidly in the Polar region than in other regions.

Three years ago, I traveled to see Sara in Guovdageaidnu during a icy season and accompanied Sámi reindeer keepers on their motorized sleds in chilly conditions as they transported trailers of food pellets on to the wind-scoured frozen landscape to provide manually. These animals surrounded round us, scratching the slippery ground in vain for lichen-covered bits. This expensive and demanding procedure is having a drastic influence on animal rearing—and on the animals' natural survival. However the alternative is starvation. As these icy periods become commonplace, reindeer are dying—some from hunger, others submerging after sinking in lakes and rivers through prematurely melting ice. On one level, the art is a tribute to them. "Through the stacking of materials, in a way I'm bringing the phenomenon to London," says Sara.

Diverging Perspectives

This artwork also highlights the sharp divergence between the industrial view of power as a asset to be exploited for gain and livelihood and the Sámi outlook of energy as an inherent essence in creatures, people, and the environment. This venue's history as a fossil fuel plant is tied up in this, as is what the Sámi consider environmental exploitation by Scandinavian states. As they strive to be standard bearers for sustainable power, Scandinavian countries have locked horns with the Sámi over the building of wind energy projects, river barriers, and extraction sites on their traditional territory; the Sámi argue their legal protections, ways of life, and culture are threatened. "It's challenging being such a small minority to stand your ground when the arguments are based on saving the world," Sara comments. "Resource exploitation has co-opted the rhetoric of sustainability, but still it's just aiming to find alternative ways to maintain practices of consumption."

Personal Conflicts

She and her kin have themselves conflicted with the state authorities over its tightening regulations on animal husbandry. In 2016, Sara's brother embarked on a set of ultimately unsuccessful legal cases over the required reduction of his animals, ostensibly to stop vegetation depletion. As a show of solidarity, Sara created a multi-year series of creations titled Pile O'Sápmi comprising a colossal screen of numerous animal bones, which was shown at the the show Documenta 14 and later obtained by the national institution, where it resides in the entrance.

Art as Advocacy

For many Sámi, creative work appears the only domain in which they can be heard by outsiders. Recently, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|