{"id":220004,"date":"2025-10-17T14:52:10","date_gmt":"2025-10-17T14:52:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/220004\/"},"modified":"2025-10-17T14:52:10","modified_gmt":"2025-10-17T14:52:10","slug":"smell-is-a-language-maret-anne-sara-on-why-tates-turbine-hall-whiffs-of-frightened-reindeer-art-and-design","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/220004\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Smell is a language\u2019: M\u00e1ret \u00c1nne Sara on why Tate\u2019s Turbine Hall whiffs of frightened reindeer | Art and design"},"content":{"rendered":"

Visitors to Tate Modern are used to unusual encounters in its vast Turbine Hall<\/a>. They\u2019ve sunbathed before an artificial sun, slid down helter skelters and witnessed AI-powered robotic jellyfish floating through the air. But this is the first time they will be taking a deep dive into a reindeer\u2019s nose. The latest artist commission for the cavernous space \u2013 by the Indigenous S\u00e1mi artist M\u00e1ret \u00c1nne Sara \u2013 invites gallerygoers into a labyrinthine structure based on the scaled-up interior of a reindeer\u2019s nasal passages. Once inside they can meander round or chill out on reindeer hides, listening on headphones to S\u00e1mi elders telling stories and imparting knowledge.<\/p>\n

Why the nose? It might sound whimsical but the installation pays tribute to a little-known natural marvel: scientists have discovered that in under a second, the reindeer\u2019s nose can heat the surrounding air it inhales by 80 degrees celsius, enabling the animal to survive in inhospitable Arctic temperatures. Scaling the nose up to larger than human size, Sara says, \u201ccreates a sense of inferiority that you as a human being are not dominant over nature\u201d. The artist is a former journalist, children\u2019s author and land defender, who comes from a reindeer-herding family in northern Norway<\/a>. \u201cMaybe that creates the potential to shift your perspective or trigger some humbleness,\u201d she adds.<\/p>\n

The maze-like structure is one of several components in Sara\u2019s immersive commission celebrating the culture, science and philosophy of the S\u00e1mi, Europe\u2019s only Indigenous people. Semi-nomadic, the S\u00e1mi number roughly 100,000 people ranged across northern Norway, Finland, Sweden, and Russia\u2019s Kola Peninsula (an area they call S\u00e1pmi). They have faced persecution, forced assimilation and suppression of their language by all four nations. By focusing on the reindeer, an animal at the heart of the S\u00e1mi cosmology and creation story, the work also draws attention to the community\u2019s struggles relating to the climate crisis, land dispossession and colonialism.<\/p>\n

On the long entrance ramp, there\u2019s a towering, 26-metre structure of reindeer hides trapped by power and light cables. It can be read as a metaphor for the political and economic systems constraining the S\u00e1mi. Part pylon, part celestial ladder, this part of the installation, titled Goavve- refers to the S\u00e1mi name for an extreme weather phenomenon, whereby dense layers of ice form as fluctuating temperatures melt and refreeze the snow, locking in the reindeers\u2019 main winter food, lichen. Goavvi is a consequence of global heating, which is happening up to four times faster in the Arctic than elsewhere.<\/p>\n

Nowhere to hide \u2026 M\u00e1ret \u00c1nne Sara (pictured with her work) in the Turbine Hall. Photograph: Guy Bell\/Shutterstock<\/p>\n

Three years ago, I visited Sara in Guovdageaidnu in the far reaches of Norway during a goavvi winter and accompanied S\u00e1mi herders on their snowmobiles in biting cold as they hauled trailers of food pellets on to the wind-scoured tundra to distribute to manually. The reindeer crowded round us, pawing the icy ground in vain for mossy morsels. This costly and labour-intensive process is having a drastic impact on reindeer husbandry \u2013 and on the animals\u2019 self-sufficiency. But the alternative is starvation. As goavvi winters become commonplace, reindeer are dying \u2013 some from lack of food, others drowning after falling into lakes and rivers through prematurely melting ice. On one level, the work is a monument to them. \u201cWith the layering of materials, in a way I\u2019m bringing the goavvi to London,\u201d says Sara.<\/p>\n

The sculpture also underscores the stark divergence between the western understanding of power as a resource to be harnessed for profit and survival and the S\u00e1mi worldview of energy as an innate life force in animals, people and land. Tate Modern\u2019s history as a coal and oil power station is tied up in this, as is what the S\u00e1mi view as green colonialism by Scandinavian states. In their efforts to be standard bearers for renewable energy, Nordic nations have locked horns with the S\u00e1mi over the construction of windfarms, hydroelectric dams and mines on their ancestral land; the S\u00e1mi argue their human rights, livelihoods and way of life are threatened. \u201cIt\u2019s very difficult being such a small minority to defend yourself when the arguments are rooted in saving the world,\u201d Sara notes. \u201cExtractivism has adopted the language of ecology, but still it\u2019s just aiming to find more suitable ways to continue habits of consumption.\u201d<\/p>\n

The artist and her family have themselves clashed with the Norwegian government over its increasingly stringent policies on herding. In 2016 Sara\u2019s brother embarked on a series of ultimately unsuccessful lawsuits over the forced culling of his herd, ostensibly to stop overgrazing. In support, Sara created a four-year series of artworks titled Pile O\u2019S\u00e1pmi including a colossal curtain of 400 reindeer skulls, which was exhibited at the 2017 art exhibition Documenta 14 and later acquired by the National Museum of Oslo, where it hangs in the entrance.<\/p>\n

For many S\u00e1mi, art seems the only sphere in which they can be heard by people of other nations. In 2022, Sara was one of three Indigenous artists who represented Norway, Finland and Sweden at the Venice Biennale when the Nordic Pavilion was temporarily rebranded the S\u00e1mi Pavilion. So her Turbine Hall commission has major political significance for the S\u00e1mi community and beyond. \u201cThis has so much synergy for Indigenous people globally, and for so many people who are not Indigenous, but who also feel strongly about the importance of ecological justice,\u201d says Katya Garc\u00eda-Ant\u00f3n, curator of the 2022 S\u00e1mi Pavilion, about the Turbine Hall work. \u201cIt will bring that conversation about rising temperatures closer. People will see that it\u2019s not across the Atlantic or somewhere in the Amazon. It\u2019s in Europe.\u201d<\/p>\n

M\u00e1ret \u00c1nne Sara stands in the middle of her Turbine Hall installation. Photograph: Guy Bell\/Shutterstock<\/p>\n

Sara\u2019s message is not about pitting western science against Indigenous knowledge; she\u2019s interested in the way crucial, life-sustaining information has been gathered and transferred down generations of S\u00e1mi, through being so closely attuned to nature. This connectedness is expressed through her materials: animal pelts, bones, wood and power cables. Washing over the Turbine Hall is a soundscape of field recordings, which combines the natural sounds of a reindeer herd, mosquitoes, birds and S\u00e1mi traditional songs or joiks, with the hum and reverberation of industrial machinery.<\/p>\n

The structure modelled on a reindeer\u2019s nasal passages is called -Geabbil (meaning \u201csmartly adaptable\u201d in S\u00e1mi). Alluding to S\u00e1mi traditions of makeshift home building, it is made with wooden poles, which are carved with the reindeer earmarks that distinguished generations of herds tended by Sara\u2019s family. The walls are decorated with reindeer bones and skulls in a nod to Pile O\u2019S\u00e1pmi. While to a westerner, the use of reindeer parts in an artwork may seem like cruelty to animals, here it underpins the S\u00e1mi notion of \u201cduodji\u201d \u2013 often crudely translated as \u201ccraft\u201d but embodying a whole philosophy of life based on the interdependence of humans, animals and nature; this means that when any animal is slaughtered, nothing goes to waste. Animal wisdom can teach us a lot, say the S\u00e1mi, who do not believe in human supremacy.<\/p>\n

Sara recounts a childhood memory. When her ordinarily strong, resourceful father was summoned to the police station for supposedly letting his reindeer eat flowers, she was shocked to witness his posture, voice and gaze change before a high-ranking officer; above all she remembered his sudden \u201cuncomfortable\u201d smell, which she later understood as embodying his fear. The artist realised that reindeer similarly emit a warning scent through their bodies when stressed. \u201cLooking at smell as a language, my memory started to make sense, understanding that we are linked with animals biologically and spiritually in every way,\u201d she says. \u201cAs a child in that moment I was given so much information by my father\u2019s presence, but wasn\u2019t able to receive it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sara has worked with an Algerian perfumer, Nadjib Achaibou, to capture the reindeer\u2019s scent of fear and diffused this around the goavvi installation to reinforce its negative associations with extractivism and other catalysts of climate breakdown. In contrast, a pleasant aroma evoking reindeer milk, Sara\u2019s breast milk and natural sweetgrass is intended to evoke hope at the entrance of the \u201cgeabbil\u201d nose structure. These scents can provoke powerful visceral reactions. The first \u201cblocks off my body,\u201d the artist notes, whereas on smelling the second \u201cinstinctively I could feel my posture changing and my lungs and chest opening up\u201d.<\/p>\n

For Sara, this Tate commission carries inherent promise. \u201cThere\u2019s something very hopeful about the potential of anyone sitting down to soak this in with openness in their bodies and perspectives,\u201d she says. \u201cFor me this is also a futuristic project, an invitation to learn from and incorporate Indigenous philosophy and knowledge into a global future.\u201d<\/p>\n

M\u00e1ret \u00c1nne Sara\u2019s Hyundai commission is at Tate Modern, London, until 6 April<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Visitors to Tate Modern are used to unusual encounters in its vast Turbine Hall. They\u2019ve sunbathed before an…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":220005,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[76,354,355,49,48,356,75],"class_list":{"0":"post-220004","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-arts","9":"tag-arts-and-design","10":"tag-artsanddesign","11":"tag-ca","12":"tag-canada","13":"tag-design","14":"tag-entertainment"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/220004","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=220004"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/220004\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/220005"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=220004"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=220004"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=220004"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}