In a peculiar turn of events in Oslo, Norway, police broke into a parked vehicle to rescue what they believed was a person in distress, only to discover a strikingly lifelike wax figure of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The sculpture, the work of controversial Norwegian artist Morten Viskum, was scheduled for display at an upcoming art fair. Viskum had placed his work in the car ahead of the event. The police action was prompted by a concerned citizen who reported seeing what appeared to be a lifeless body inside the vehicle.
NRK, a Norwegian news outlet, reports that Viskum has built a reputation for his provocative artistic endeavors, including previous wax sculptures of contentious world figures. His past works have featured likenesses of Russian President Vladimir Putin and former U.S. president Donald Trump.
Viskum’s notoriety extends beyond sculpture; he once distributed jars of olives containing rats to 20 supermarkets across Norway’s five largest urban centers. In another controversial project, he used a hand severed from a cadaver as a paintbrush, creating a series entitled “The hand that never stopped painting.”
Norway has long been known for its critical stance regarding Israeli policies. In the wake of the Oct. 7 Hamas onslaught on southern Israel, such criticism has only intensified in Norwegian artistic circles, with some exhibits veering into territory that has been labeled antisemitic.
Commenting on the incident, On Alpeleg, a former Israeli resident of Norway, tweeted: “Yet another instance of a Norwegian ‘artist’ pushing boundaries. Following other ‘artists’ who superimposed a keffiyeh on a portrait of Anne Frank and depicted Netanyahu as Hitler, this Norwegian ‘artist’ has now produced a wax effigy of Benjamin Netanyahu.”
Originally published by Israel Hayom.
