Delving into this Smell of Fear: Máret Ánne Sara Revamps The Gallery's Turbine Hall with Reindeer Inspired Installation

Guests to the renowned gallery are used to unusual displays in its spacious Turbine Hall. They've basked under an artificial sun, glided down amusement rides, and observed automated sea creatures floating through the air. However this marks the first time they will be immersing themselves in the intricate nose chambers of a reindeer. The latest creative installation for this cavernous space—designed by Native Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara—invites visitors into a winding construction modeled after the expanded interior of a reindeer's nose passages. Upon entering, they can meander around or relax on pelts, tuning in on earphones to tribal seniors sharing stories and wisdom.

The Significance of the Nose

What's the focus on the nose? It may sound quirky, but the artwork honors a rarely recognized scientific wonder: scientists have uncovered that in less than one second, the reindeer's nose can raise the temperature of the ambient air it takes in by 80 degrees celsius, helping the animal to thrive in inhospitable Arctic conditions. Scaling the nose to larger than human size, Sara notes, "produces a perception of smallness that you as a person are not dominant over nature." She is a ex- journalist, young adult author, and land defender, who comes from a pastoral family in the Norwegian Arctic. "Perhaps that generates the chance to change your perspective or evoke some modesty," she adds.

A Celebration to Traditional Ways

The maze-like installation is one of several features in Sara's immersive exhibition honoring the culture, knowledge, and philosophy of the Sámi, the continent's original inhabitants. Semi-nomadic, the Sámi number approximately 100,000 people distributed across northern Norway, the Finnish Arctic, Sweden, and the Kola region (an territory they call Sápmi). They've faced oppression, integration policies, and repression of their dialect by all four countries. By focusing on the reindeer, an creature at the heart of the Sámi belief system and founding narrative, the work also draws attention to the people's challenges connected to the environmental emergency, property rights, and colonialism.

Metaphor in Elements

Along the long entrance ramp, there's a soaring, 26-metre formation of pelts entangled by utility lines. It can be read as a metaphor for the societal frameworks limiting the Sámi. Partly a utility pole, part spiritual ascent, this part of the artwork, named Goavve-, points to the Sámi word for an severe climatic event, wherein dense coatings of ice develop as varying weather thaw and solidify again the snow, locking in the reindeers' key winter nourishment, moss. Goavvi is a consequence of climate change, which is occurring up to much more rapidly in the Polar region than in other regions.

Previously, I met with Sara in the Norwegian far north during a goavvi winter and went with Sámi reindeer keepers on their snowmobiles in freezing temperatures as they carried trailers of animal nutrition on to the exposed Arctic plains to distribute through labor. The reindeer gathered round us, scratching the icy ground in vain attempts for mossy bits. This resource-intensive and demanding method is having a drastic impact on reindeer husbandry—and on the animals' self-sufficiency. However the choice is death. As these icy periods become commonplace, reindeer are perishing—some from starvation, others suffocating after sinking in water bodies through prematurely melting ice. On one level, the work is a monument to them. "With the layering of components, in a way I'm introducing the phenomenon to London," says Sara.

Diverging Worldviews

The installation also highlights the stark difference between the western view of power as a asset to be exploited for economic benefit and existence and the Sámi outlook of life force as an inherent life force in animals, humans, and land. The gallery's legacy as a coal and oil power station is linked with this, as is what the Sámi view as eco-imperialism by regional governments. As they strive to be exemplars for clean sources, Scandinavian countries have disagreed with the Sámi over the development of windfarms, water power facilities, and extraction sites on their traditional territory; the Sámi argue their legal protections, incomes, and traditions are endangered. "It's hard being such a limited population to protect your rights when the justifications are grounded in global sustainability," Sara observes. "Resource exploitation has adopted the rhetoric of environmentalism, but yet it's just striving to find more suitable ways to persist in habits of consumption."

Personal Challenges

She and her family have themselves clashed with the state authorities over its increasingly stringent rules on animal husbandry. A few years ago, Sara's sibling embarked on a sequence of unsuccessful legal cases over the mandatory slaughter of his animals, ostensibly to stop excessive feeding. To back him, Sara produced a four-year set of artworks named Pile O'Sápmi comprising a massive curtain of numerous animal bones, which was shown at the 2017's show Documenta 14 and later purchased by the National Museum of Oslo, where it resides in the entryway.

Creative Expression as Awareness

For many Sámi, visual expression appears the sole realm in which they can be heard by the global community. Two years ago, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|