Exploring this Scent of Anxiety: Máret Ánne Sara Revamps The Gallery's Exhibition Space with Arctic Deer Themed Installation

Attendees to the renowned gallery are accustomed to surprising encounters in its vast Turbine Hall. They have basked under an simulated sun, slid down amusement rides, and seen automated sea creatures floating through the air. Yet this marks the initial time they will be engaging themselves in the complex nasal chambers of a reindeer. The latest artist commission for this huge space—developed by Indigenous Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—welcomes patrons into a maze-like design based on the scaled-up interior of a reindeer's nose cavities. Upon entering, they can meander around or unwind on skins, tuning in on earphones to community leaders imparting tales and insights.

Focus on the Nasal Passages

Why choose the nasal structure? It may appear whimsical, but the artwork celebrates a little-known biological feat: scientists have uncovered that in under a second, the reindeer's nose can heat the incoming air it inhales by eighty degrees, helping the creature to endure in extreme Arctic climates. Enlarging the nose to larger than human size, Sara explains, "generates a sense of smallness that you as a individual are not dominant over nature." The artist is a ex- journalist, children's author, and rights advocate, who comes from a pastoral family in the far north of Norway. "Possibly that creates the chance to change your perspective or trigger some humbleness," she states.

A Celebration to Traditional Ways

The labyrinthine design is one of several components in Sara's absorbing art project honoring the heritage, science, and philosophy of the Sámi, Europe's only Indigenous people. Traditionally mobile, the Sámi count about 100,000 people spread across northern Norway, Finland, the Swedish Lapland, and the Russian Arctic (an territory they call Sápmi). They have experienced oppression, cultural suppression, and eradication of their dialect by all four nations. By focusing on the reindeer, an animal at the core of the Sámi mythology and founding narrative, the art also draws attention to the people's struggles associated with the environmental emergency, land dispossession, and external control.

Symbolism in Components

Along the lengthy access incline, there's a towering, 26-meter formation of reindeer hides entangled by electrical wires. It can be read as a metaphor for the governance and financial structures limiting the Sámi. Part pylon, part heavenly staircase, this section of the exhibit, titled Goavve-, refers to the Sámi term for an extreme weather phenomenon, whereby dense sheets of ice form as changing temperatures liquefy and solidify again the snow, locking in the reindeers' main winter food, lichen. Goavvi is a outcome of global heating, which is happening up to much more rapidly in the Arctic than in other regions.

Three years ago, I met with Sara in a remote town during a severe cold period and accompanied Sámi pastoralists on their snowmobiles in freezing temperatures as they transported containers of animal nutrition on to the barren tundra to provide through labor. The reindeer gathered round us, scratching the frozen ground in futility for vegetative pieces. This expensive and demanding process is having a drastic impact on reindeer husbandry—and on the animals' natural survival. Yet the choice is death. As goavvi winters become routine, reindeer are perishing—a number from starvation, others drowning after sinking in streams through prematurely melting ice. To some extent, the installation is a tribute to them. "Through the stacking of elements, in a way I'm transporting the goavvi to London," says Sara.

Contrasting Perspectives

The installation also highlights the clear difference between the modern view of power as a asset to be utilized for gain and survival and the Sámi outlook of vitality as an natural essence in animals, people, and the environment. This venue's past as a coal and oil power station is connected to this, as is what the Sámi see as eco-imperialism by Scandinavian states. As they strive to be standard bearers for renewable energy, Scandinavian countries have clashed with the Sámi over the building of windfarms, river barriers, and digging operations on their native soil; the Sámi assert their legal protections, incomes, and traditions are at risk. "It's very difficult being such a small minority to defend yourself when the justifications are rooted in global sustainability," Sara observes. "Mining practices has appropriated the rhetoric of ecology, but nonetheless it's just aiming to find better ways to maintain practices of consumption."

Personal Conflicts

She and her relatives have personally conflicted with the state authorities over its tightening regulations on herding. In 2016, Sara's sibling undertook a series of ultimately unsuccessful lawsuits over the required reduction of his herd, ostensibly to stop excessive feeding. As a show of solidarity, Sara developed a multi-year series of artworks titled Pile O'Sápmi comprising a massive drape of numerous cranial remains, which was exhibited at the the art exhibition Documenta 14 and later purchased by the public gallery, where it resides in the entryway.

Creative Expression as Activism

For numerous Indigenous people, visual expression is the exclusive sphere in which they can be listened to by people of other nations. In 2022, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|