Louise Bourgeois’s Femme is a small yet compelling figure: headless and seemingly caught in perpetual metamorphosis. Sculpted in pink marble when the artist was 93 years old, its miniature, pregnant form encapsulates Bourgeois’s enduring preoccupation with themes of motherhood, transformation, and trauma.

Speaking of reproduction, one might say that Bourgeois’s work epitomizes what theorist Peter Osborne calls the “necessary but impossible” relationship between contemporary art and capitalism. Femme was loaned for this exhibition at a cost of 3,000 NOK by Christen Sveaas’s Kunststiftelse, a private art collection owned by Christen Sveaas, who is listed as Norway’s 22nd wealthiest individual.[1] Sveaas’s company, Kistefos AS, invests in dry cargo shipping, offshore supply, finance, private equity, venture capital, technology, and real estate[2]. He also operates the Kistefos Museum, whose annual budget exceeds 70 million NOK (including 3.8 million NOK in public funding).[3] In stark contrast, Trondheim Kunstmuseum’s yearly exhibition budget is about 1.5 million NOK, underscoring the disparity in resources among Norwegian art institutions.

Many private collections in Norway — often built on the principle of art as investment — tend to feature a similar roster of European-American artists, reflecting the globalized capitalist art market that emerged after 1989. This dynamic illustrates what Karl Marx termed the “fetish character of the commodity.” However, unlike more orthodox Marxist critics, Osborne argues that art’s commodification does not simply neutralize its critical potential. Rather, art’s power lies in its paradoxical status as both commodity and critique of the commodity-form: while artworks circulate as high-value assets, their conceptual dimensions can still expose contradictions within capitalism.

Indeed, Bourgeois’s artistic legacy, even if “necessarily but impossibly” absorbed into the globalized art market, continuously strikes back. One of her most powerful late projects is the Steilneset Memorial in Vardø, northern Norway, completed shortly after her death in 2011. Also known as The Damned, The Possessed, and The Beloved, it commemorates 91 victims of 17th-century witch trials in Finnmark. Here, Bourgeois’s work stands as a testament to art’s capacity to bear witness to historical injustices, even as it traverses the ever-shifting terrain of global capital.

-        Yaniya Mikhalina

[1] Finansavisen, “Norges 400 Rikeste,” Kapital Index. (https://www.finansavisen.no/kapital-index/norges-400-rikeste)

[2] Wikipedia, “Christen Sveaas,” last modified 2024.

[3] Kistefos Museum, “Annual Report 2022.” (https://www.kistefosmuseum.no/uploads/documents/Kistefos-Museum-arsrapport-2022-SKJERM.pdf)