Exploring the Aroma of Anxiety: Máret Ánne Sara Revamps The Gallery's Exhibition Space with Arctic Deer Inspired Exhibit

Attendees to the renowned gallery are familiar to unusual experiences in its spacious Turbine Hall. They have relaxed under an simulated sun, glided down amusement rides, and observed AI-powered jellyfish floating through the air. Yet this marks the first time they will be venturing themselves in the intricate nasal passages of a reindeer. The latest artist commission for this huge space—designed by Native Sámi creator Máret Ánne Sara—invites patrons into a maze-like structure inspired by the enlarged inside of a reindeer's nose passages. Once inside, they can stroll around or chill out on reindeer hides, tuning in on earphones to Sámi elders sharing stories and wisdom.

Why the Nose?

Why choose the nasal structure? It could seem whimsical, but the artwork celebrates a little-known biological feat: researchers have discovered that in less than one second, the reindeer's nose can warm the surrounding air it inhales by eighty degrees, helping the creature to endure in inhospitable Arctic conditions. Scaling the nose to bigger than a person, Sara notes, "produces a perception of smallness that you as a individual are not dominant over nature." She is a former reporter, young adult author, and environmental activist, who is from a pastoral family in northern Norway. "Possibly that generates the potential to shift your outlook or evoke some humility," she adds.

An Homage to Traditional Ways

The maze-like design is part of a components in Sara's immersive exhibition showcasing the traditions, science, and beliefs of the Sámi, the sole native group in Europe. Traditionally mobile, the Sámi total approximately 100,000 people spread across northern Norway, the Finnish Arctic, the Swedish Lapland, and the Kola region (an area they call Sápmi). They have endured oppression, forced assimilation, and eradication of their dialect by all four countries. With an emphasis on the reindeer, an creature at the heart of the Sámi cosmology and creation story, the work also highlights the community's challenges relating to the climate crisis, land dispossession, and colonialism.

Symbolism in Elements

Along the extended access incline, there's a looming, eighty-five-foot formation of pelts ensnared by utility lines. It can be read as a metaphor for the governance and financial structures limiting the Sámi. Part pylon, part celestial ladder, this component of the exhibit, titled Goavve-, points to the Sámi term for an severe climatic event, whereby solid layers of ice form as varying temperatures melt and refreeze the snow, encasing the reindeers' key cold-season food, lichen. The condition is a consequence of global heating, which is happening up to four times faster in the Arctic than elsewhere.

A few years back, I traveled to see Sara in the Norwegian far north during a severe cold period and accompanied Sámi herders on their Arctic vehicles in freezing temperatures as they carried carts of food pellets on to the exposed frozen landscape to dispense by hand. These animals gathered round us, pawing the slippery ground in vain for lichen-covered morsels. This costly and laborious method is having a drastic effect on animal rearing—and on the animals' self-sufficiency. However the choice is malnutrition. As goavvi winters become frequent, reindeer are succumbing—some from hunger, others suffocating after sinking in lakes and rivers through unstable frozen surfaces. In a sense, the art is a memorial to them. "With the layering of materials, in a way I'm transporting the goavvi to London," says Sara.

Contrasting Belief Systems

This artwork also emphasizes the stark contrast between the western view of power as a resource to be exploited for profit and livelihood and the Sámi worldview of vitality as an innate power in animals, individuals, and nature. The gallery's past as a industrial facility is tied up in this, as is what the Sámi see as environmental exploitation by regional governments. In their efforts to be exemplars for renewable energy, Scandinavian countries have locked horns with the Sámi over the building of wind energy projects, water power facilities, and mines on their traditional territory; the Sámi argue their legal protections, livelihoods, and way of life are endangered. "It's hard being such a tiny group to protect your rights when the justifications are based on environmental protection," Sara observes. "Mining practices has appropriated the discourse of environmentalism, but yet it's just aiming to find better ways to continue patterns of consumption."

Family Conflicts

Sara and her kin have themselves conflicted with the national administration over its increasingly stringent rules on reindeer management. 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 vegetation depletion. As a show of solidarity, Sara created a four-year series of pieces titled Pile O'Sápmi comprising a huge drape of four hundred animal bones, which was exhibited at the 2017's art exhibition Documenta 14 and later purchased by the national institution, where it resides in the lobby.

Art as Awareness

Among the community, creative work is the sole domain in which they can be listened to by outsiders. Two years ago, Sara was {one of three|among a group of|