‘Certain materials seek me out’

LIV BRISSACH In many ways, being Indigenous – which connects you deeply to a specific area, its land and waters – is also an identity that connects you to millions of people across the globe. There might be thousands of people with Indigenous backgrounds in London alone, where you’re currently preparing your commission for the Turbine Hall. How do you navigate these differing scales – from being rooted in your community in Guovdageaidnu in Sápmi, which is itself already transnational, spanning parts of Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia, to communicating with audiences on a global scale?

MÁRET ÁNNE SARA That’s something I’ve been interested in for a long time, and which has become central to my Turbine Hall commission. Ever since I studied journalism at university and started travelling to visit different Indigenous communities as part of my studies, one question has stuck with me: We are fundamentally so entwined, so what is it that connects us across the world? And, at the same time: Why am I understood so differently from Western perspectives? The relationship between Western frameworks and Indigenous knowledge is something I explore in many of my art projects. These often originate in concerns from my own life – for example, with the ongoing, escalating struggles to protect our land in Sápmi.

LB The materials you work with, too, tend to reflect your life as part of a reindeer-herding family in Sápmi.

MÁS Yes, certain materials seek me out. In Sámi, we have a particular word – oavnjistit – for when a wolf is in hunting mode and you can feel that it has begun following your movements, but you can’t see it – it’s a kind of haunting. That’s the kind of relationship I have with art, and with different materials that seem to want my attention. Using reindeer heads in my work Pile o ́Sápmi 2016–17 was the first time I fully gave in to this pull, because the situation was so urgent. I had no other strategies left. [Pile o ́Sápmi was created in response to state legislation that limits the number of reindeer in each herding district. In 2016, Máret Ánne’s brother Jovsset Ánte Sara sued the Norwegian state to prevent the forced slaughter of his reindeer.] Communicating with materials or subjects at this level has often helped me to identify and articulate complex issues. It has also sparked important conversations, and in some cases has even catalysed change by challenging societal structures that have been running on destructive autopilot for too long.

The last time this happened was with the snowmobile belts I incorporated into my performance and exhibition, Háhčešeatni doali dádjadit, which premiered earlier this year at the True Northern Arts Festival in Harstad, Norway. I usually have a dialogue with natural materials that I feel really comfortable with. But then came the belts. They felt foreign, confrontational and, at first, they scared me. Reinforced rubber is a heavy, unyielding material that doesn’t let me work with my hands in the way I normally do. I decided to work with it anyway, since these objects were demanding my attention. I had to start by asking: ‘Why does this frighten me?’ That was the starting point for a long journey involving deep research into Sámi knowledge systems, cosmology and philosophies that haven’t really been written down. This knowledge has been condemned and undermined over generations in Norway. Today, what is left of it survives in people’s bodies, in everyday rituals and stories. The artistic journey and process gave me a deeper understanding of the scale of this loss of knowledge – not only for my community and me but for biodiversity too, for all life on this planet.

LB I understand that your recent work with the snowmobile belts was also inspired by one of the Sámi creation myths – about the relationship between people, animals and their surroundings?

MÁS Háhčešeatni doali dádjadit is the title of the work you’re referring to. The word doalli describes a path that is sometimes unseen, but which animals know by bodily knowledge and instinct. Dádjadit is a verb that describes your ability to encompass or manage something. Háhčešeatni is one of two central Sámi ethical characters. The myth of Háhčešeatni and Njávešeatni, the two first women, isn’t just a creation story. It also communicates Sámi ethics about how to be, and how not to be, a human being on earth – in relation to animals, the environment, and other people. Háhčešeatni is greedy and selfish, and disregards the consequences of her actions, while Njávešeatni embodies care, respect and responsibility. I feel the pathway of Háhčešeatni is the path that the whole Western, capitalist, modern world is treading down.

In the story, both women tame wild reindeer. But Háhčešeatni treats hers so brutally that when she milks them, they bleed. The reindeer talk to each other, and we learn that Háhčešeatni’s reindeer want to escape and return to the wild, while Njávešeatni’s are willing to stay because of Njávešeatni’s kindness. When Háhčešeatni later finds out that her herd have fled, she gets so furious that she throws their empty reins to try to catch them. The only thing she catches are branches in the trees, forming clusters of twigs as she pulls back the reins. The twisted growths that form nest-like structures in trees, usually birch, are scientifically said to be sign of the tree’s illness. In Sámi, they’re called Háhčešeatni lavžegihppu, in reference to this story. And in Sámi philosophy they’re more like existential reminders of how our behaviour affects our surroundings. In this way, nature itself becomes an infinite carrier of memory and ethics.

LB You share these stories generously – stories that are part of your everyday life but which are also prisms through which Sámi ways of being in the world can be communicated.

MÁS Our stories, outlook on nature, philosophy and ethical guidelines flow into each other and are alive and present in our everyday lives. As a child I grew up immersed in this kind of worldview. It’s been a long journey for me to piece together these small fragments and to start laying a foundation for claiming philosophical autonomy. The way I see it now, epistemicide [the destruction of knowledge] is one of the greatest losses we’ve suffered during Norwegian and Nordic assimilation and colonisation. And it’s our biggest weakness when engaging with state authorities. We’re speaking from two entirely different worldviews, with different philosophical rationalities – one of which has no recognised autonomy, no external understanding, no legitimacy. So we end up speaking into a void, and we can’t win. We are navigating in a system that does not recognise or understand or support our fundamental logic.

LB It’s been almost 10 years since the first iteration of Pile o ́Sápmi, in which you installed a mound of reindeer heads, fur and flesh still on them, with a Norwegian flag planted on top, outside Tana District Court in Northern Norway. Different iterations of this work followed your brother’s court case, in support of his claim and rights to continue reindeer herding, but also as a critique of the Norwegian state’s hypocritical legislations affecting your family’s reindeer herding pastures. Looking back now, what artistic trajectories began for you with, and culminated in, Pile o ́Sápmi?

MÁS As I said, doalli means a path – an instinctual trail that animals recognise and follow. For me, this became a metaphor for the path the world is now on, one that we all must navigate, with our own values and choices. Pile o ́Sápmi, the court case and everything it brought with it, was a process that crushed my faith in justice that could be found within the structure of the nation state. I stopped believing in the Western systems we’re caught up in, systems driven by capitalist values. Since then, letting the artwork and materials I work with lead my thinking has helped me to see other paths forward.

My recognition in the international art world was never an intention. The art found its own path – it lands where it makes sense, it seems. At least that’s how I choose to think of it. Initially, I didn’t want to participate in the Venice Biennale in 2022, when the Nordic Pavilion was transformed into The Sámi Pavilion. I was burnt out, angry and drained from fighting a system that is deaf to our reasoning and set on its contradictory and destructive intentions. Looking back, I’m grateful that the curator Katya García-Antón convinced me to push forward, and trust my art for how it might be needed and for what it might give rise to. For me, it became the beginning of a new path into Sámi ways of knowing, which are non-verbal, intuitive, bodily, energetic, spiritual and always in dialogue with landscapes, animals, people and everything around us.

LB Speaking of the Venice Biennale, in The Sámi Pavilion people encountered a work consisting of sculptural reindeer guts and a duet of smells inspired by hope and fear. What is it about scent that made you want to work with it in your art?

MÁS The work you mention, Du-ššan-ahttanu-ššan 2022, began with a strong childhood memory. I grew up in a reindeer-herding family in the Fálá district – an area that includes the natural gas field Snøhvit, a city known for its rapid expansion and also racism, the Nussir copper-silver-gold mining project, plans for massive powerlines, and wind turbine parks. It has been a tense and difficult area to return to in the summers. As a child I sensed this discomfort, even if I was partly shielded from it. Up on the mountains, though, I felt safe and wanted to be with my dad all the time. His knowledge of nature, animals and the improvisational skills that come with nomadic life made me feel at home and very safe. In reindeer herding, all Sámi knowledge and philosophy is activated.

The particular memory I subconsciously held onto was of the one day my father didn’t want to let me go with him as he was setting out for the day. I begged, and in the end, he let me join him. But rather than going to the herd, instead we drove to the police station in Hammerfest. I didn’t know it at the time, but my father had received a call from the police because our reindeer had been eating flowers in the city. When we arrived, we were met by a high-ranking officer in full uniform. We sat behind a table facing him. In this moment, my father changed – his posture, voice and gaze. But the most unsettling thing – what really stuck with me – was that his smell changed.

When I started working with the concept of gapmu – an intuitive Sámi communication system, often centred in the gut and central to my work for the Venice Biennale – I was reminded of the reindeer when they’re rounded up in the corral. We have a specific word, vávahuvvon hádja, for the scent that reindeer give off when they’re stressed or scared, for instance when they’re herded into enclosures or trailers for slaughter. I began thinking of this as a language, and asked: ‘Why is that memory of my father’s smell so vivid, and what can scent communicate?’ Looking at the mechanics, it is quite clear that scent acts as a language between animals and across species. In the case of the reindeers it acts as a warning, telling other animals that a place isn’t safe. Understanding this, I could finally make sense of that childhood memory. Humans are also animals, and we have that same mechanism. In that moment with my father, I was given all the information, about fear, danger and discomfort, but I wasn’t yet able to receive it. We take in information from our surroundings all the time. As a species, we need to navigate back to a respect and understanding for this intuitive way of communicating.

LB I remember that the smell of fear, which was part of the work, had an intensity and immediacy that couldn’t be ignored. It hit your nose, and a reaction was felt through your body. It was as if something was clearly saying: ‘Get away!’

I also remember the production process, which I was a part of, especially your collaboration with Nadjib Achaibou, a perfumier in Mexico. To bring him into your olfactory world, you smuggled reindeer droppings and other raw materials inside a book you posted to him. He opened it live on a Zoom call. How have you found translating such personal, subjective experiences into something that reaches others?

MÁS Working with smell for the first time, there was a lot to learn. Nadjib had been to Svalbard before, so he already had some references as to how the Arctic climate and smell interact. I also sent him images and videos, and we talked about feelings and experiences – but in the end, you can’t describe a bodily reaction. He had to smell the stressed reindeer scent himself. Due to COVID travel restrictions, and the fact that I had just given birth, that wasn’t easy. But with help from an assistant, we scraped remnants from the slaughter truck and collected other fresh materials, before vacuum-sealing them, and hiding them in a book alongside special plants, including reindeer moss, from where I live. We also carried out an analysis in a lab to figure out the molecular composition of these samples. As a professional perfumier, Nadjib has a rare ability to both understand the bodily experience of a smell while also comprehending scent at the molecular level – what is in it and how it can be recreated.

When the work was shown in Venice, it was fascinating to see how subjective smell really is. Some people liked the scent. But mostly, they found that it triggered a bodily reaction. Some people wanted to physically back away from the work. I found myself thinking that the smell of fear tightens the body, shuts it down, while the other scent – of safety or hope – opens you up, like a deep breath that relaxes you.

LB Now you are bringing all this knowledge into the Turbine Hall at Tate Modern, a space that is enormous both in size and reach. In its industrial past, this building supplied oil and coal-fired electricity to the city of London, and from 2010, well into its new life as part of an international art museum, it became the hub of the art collective Liberate Tate’s action to ‘free art from oil’ – which in 2016 marked the end of BP’s sponsorship deal with the museum. Since your work and ideas stem from place, how has this setting spoken to you while you’ve been developing your new commission?

MÁS The platform it represents today – the visibility it has in the art world and beyond – is fascinating. It is particularly meaningful to speak from the Turbine Hall, a space which once served as a power station, and which stands as a symbol of the extractivist and capitalist systems that have helped fuel today’s global ecological crisis.

I am interested in asking from the position of nature, of life itself, what do we truly understand as power, energy, wealth, or even knowledge? Indigenous science offers a different perspective – one rooted in deep connection with nature, and the intelligence and power embedded within it. I would like to bring Indigenous science into the Turbine Hall, considering what it can offer in the face of the urgent challenges we now share.

^{Hyundai Commission: Máret Ánne Sara, Tate Modern, 14 October 2025 – 6 April 2026.}

^{Liv Brissach is Curator, Nordnorsk Kunstmuseum / Northern Norwegian Art Museum / Davvi Norgga dáiddamusea.}

^{Máret Ánne Sara is an artist and author based in Guovdageaidnu, Sápmi / Kautokeino, Northern Norway.}

^{Linda Brownlee is a photographer based in Dublin.}

^{Hyundai Commission: Máret Ánne Sara is in partnership with Hyundai Motor. Supported by Máret Ánne Sara Supporters with additional support from the Máret Ánne Sara Supporters Circle and Tate Americas Foundation.}