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

Guests to the renowned gallery are used to unusual encounters in its spacious Turbine Hall. They've relaxed under an man-made sun, glided down amusement rides, and observed robotic jellyfish floating through the air. But this marks the initial time they will be immersing themselves in the detailed nasal cavities of a reindeer. The newest artistic project for this huge space—created by Indigenous Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—encourages visitors into a labyrinthine construction based on the scaled-up inside of a reindeer's nasal airways. Inside, they can meander around or chill out on pelts, tuning in on earphones to tribal seniors sharing tales and insights.

Why the Nose?

Why choose the nasal structure? It might sound whimsical, but the artwork celebrates a little-known scientific wonder: scientists have found that in under a second, the reindeer's nose can heat the surrounding air it breathes in by 80 degrees celsius, allowing the creature to survive in harsh Arctic temperatures. Scaling the nose to human-scale dimensions, Sara explains, "creates a perception of smallness that you as a person are not in control over nature." She is a former writer, young adult author, and land defender, who is from a herding family in the far north of Norway. "Maybe that fosters the possibility to shift your perspective or evoke some humbleness," she states.

A Celebration to Sámi Culture

The labyrinthine structure is part of a features in Sara's engaging exhibition showcasing the traditions, science, and philosophy of the Sámi, Europe's only Indigenous people. Partially migratory, the Sámi number approximately 100,000 people spread across northern Norway, Finland, Sweden, and the Russian Arctic (an area they call Sápmi). They've endured oppression, cultural suppression, and repression of their language by all four nations. By focusing on the reindeer, an animal at the heart of the Sámi mythology and origin tale, the installation also draws attention to the group's struggles connected to the environmental emergency, property rights, and external control.

Symbolism in Elements

At the extended access incline, there's a soaring, eighty-five-foot formation of skins trapped by utility lines. It serves as a analogy for the societal frameworks limiting the Sámi. Part pylon, part celestial ladder, this part of the artwork, titled Goavve-, points to the Sámi term for an harsh environmental condition, whereby dense layers of ice develop as varying weather thaw and refreeze the snow, locking in the reindeers' main winter nourishment, fungus. This phenomenon is a result of global heating, which is taking place up to much more rapidly in the Far North than in other regions.

A few years back, I met with Sara in a remote town during a goavvi winter and joined Sámi reindeer keepers on their snowmobiles in chilly conditions as they carried carts of supplementary feed on to the wind-scoured Arctic plains to provide manually. These animals gathered round us, scratching the icy ground in vain for vegetative morsels. This costly and labour-intensive procedure is having a drastic influence on reindeer husbandry—and on the animals' natural survival. But the choice is death. As these icy periods become commonplace, reindeer are perishing—a number from lack of food, others suffocating after plunging into water bodies through prematurely melting ice. In a sense, the installation is a memorial to them. "With the layering of elements, in a way I'm transporting the goavvi to London," says Sara.

Diverging Belief Systems

The sculpture also emphasizes the sharp difference between the industrial interpretation of electricity as a asset to be exploited for gain and survival and the Sámi worldview of life force as an innate power in creatures, humans, and the environment. The gallery's past as a fossil fuel plant is connected to this, as is what the Sámi consider environmental exploitation by regional governments. As they strive to be standard bearers for renewable energy, these states have locked horns with the Sámi over the building of wind energy projects, hydroelectric dams, and mines on their traditional territory; the Sámi assert their fundamental freedoms, livelihoods, and traditions are at risk. "It's challenging being such a small minority to defend yourself when the justifications are grounded in global sustainability," Sara comments. "Extractivism has adopted the language of ecology, but yet it's just striving to find alternative ways to persist in habits of expenditure."

Family Struggles

Sara and her kin have personally disagreed with the Norwegian government over its ever-stricter rules on animal husbandry. A few years ago, Sara's sibling initiated a series of ultimately unsuccessful legal cases over the required reduction of his livestock, ostensibly to stop excessive feeding. As a show of solidarity, Sara developed a four-year set of artworks titled Pile O'Sápmi comprising a massive drape of numerous cranial remains, which was displayed at the 2017 show Documenta 14 and later acquired by the public gallery, where it resides in the entrance.

The Role of Art in Activism

For many Sámi, creative work seems the only domain in which they can be listened to by the global community. In 2022, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|