If art exists to help us to see the world from another perspective, then the Sami artist Maret Anne Sara’s Hyundai Commission at Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall is doing its job. Her installation, Goavve-Geabbil, is an atmospheric primer on the philosophy and plight of the Sami people of Norway (Sami are indigenous to the wider Sapmi region, which spans northern Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia’s Kola Peninsula). Sara is from a reindeer herding family, a group whose livelihood is at risk as a result of government policy and climate change.
As you enter to a soundscape of recordings from the Sapmi landscape and the Sami musical practice joik, which uses voice to evoke the essence of a person, animal or place (it sounds a bit like you’re underwater), the first sculpture you see is Goavve-: 27 reindeer hides, the by-products of food production, are bound into a tower of electrical power cables reaching all the way to the ceiling.
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Get closer to the hides and your nostrils are assailed by a unique scent — a weird, cold sort of smell, like heavy urine but unpleasantly metallic, which reindeer give off when they’re under extreme stress. It’s the smell of fear, and it is horrible. The message is perhaps a tad on the nose, no pun intended, but it is effective.
-Geabbil in the Turbine Hall at Tate Modern
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Speaking of noses, the main event here is -Geabbil, a maze of cut saplings based on the internal anatomy of the reindeer nose: a mind-blowingly efficient appendage, which can heat air by 80C in a second, enabling survival in freezing temperatures. Within the structure’s elegant coils, seating covered in reindeer hides invites you to luxuriate in their softness and warmth (they’re also scented with “hope” — the sweet smell of native plants), while headphones play what amounts to an audio documentary on Sami reindeer herding and how it’s being affected. The combination of this and the distinctly hygge (a Norwegian, not Sami, concept) space is less jarring than you’d think.
Reindeer furs form part of the installation
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And the details are compelling. Earlier snows bring freezing ground, making it hard for reindeer to dig through to find food. The bulls, the strongest in the herd, are being slaughtered to adhere to government regulations — come winter, the females and calves can’t break through. The ice on the lakes is thinner, making it risky to move about; last summer, 200 reindeer drowned from one herd.
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Sara, whose brother fought the Norwegian government for the right to run his small herd in the traditional manner, losing only in the Supreme Court, says she turned to art because nothing else was working. Who knows whether this will help, but it certainly opens the eyes.
★★★★☆
To Apr 6, tate.org.uk