VANCOUVER - The Vancouver Art Gallery was missing two toads on Saturday.
Chief curator Daina Augaitis knew where the lizards, snakes, scorpions, millipede, crickets and tarantulas were -- but the toads could not be found in their cage.
The creatures are part of an installation piece by Chinese artist Huang Yong Ping called Theatre of the World.
They sit on plywood, under bright spotlights and mesh shaped to look like a turtle shell. A few shavings dot the cage. It's sparse.
Overhead, the plywood skeleton of a 40-metre-long python winds its way across the ceiling.
The piece has drawn criticism from animal rights groups even though it's just one of 40 pieces in Huang's House of Oracles show -- an exhibition challenging established views of religion, Eastern and Western culture and history.
Controversy over Theatre of the World has drawn the entire show into the spotlight.
With crickets chirping quietly behind her, Augaitis says the work is a microcosm of global conflict and power dynamics.
The descriptive text accompanying the piece says "the work functions as a metaphor for the conflicts among different peoples and culture -- in short, human existence itself.''
Vancouver Humane Society spokesman Peter Fricker said the enclosure bears no resemblance to the creatures' natural habitats.
He says the cage is designed specifically to spur aggression.
"It's pretty clear that the intention is that the observer is intended to witness potential conflict between the animals which frankly I think is kind of sick,'' Fricker told the The Globe and Mail.
He said it should be dismantled.
While Augaitis is due to meet with Fricker this week, she says no animal rights groups have been to the gallery.
The controversy has overshadowed the rest of what is a compelling collection of installation pieces.
Created in conjunction with Minneapolis' Walker Art Center, the show is described in a gallery release as "an immersive sculptural environment that is a hybrid of fun house, diorama and menagerie.''
Those attending the show enter to find themselves with a choice of two doors. Above one is what looks like an airport customs sign reading `Nationals'. Above the other is a sign reading `Others.'
Through the doors are cages with empty food bowls, meat bones and lion feces. It's the remains of those past meals visitors to the exhibit must negotiate to enter.
''It's very powerful,'' Augaitis says. "You do feel like you're being scrutinized.
Further on, an alligator's body morphs into a wolf's head. It's mouth is agape, the teeth reaching for a figure on a crucifix. Above it, a Buddha holds a fishing rod.
"It's this animal figure that only God could control,'' Augaitis says. "The Buddha figure is the one that's fishing for this creature. Again, it's the conflict of Eastern and Western tradition.''
Huang was born in the city of Xiamen in China's Fjian province where he formed the Xiamen Dada group in 1986.
It's not the first time an artistic piece in Vancouver have raised the ire of animals rights groups.
In 1990, Rick Gibson planned a performance piece in which he proposed to flatten Sniffy the Rat between a concrete block and a canvass outside the city's library.
Outraged people swarmed the performance to save the rat.
"They should drop a brick on your head,''one man shouted at Gibson.
The House of Oracles show runs at the Vancouver Art Gallery until Sept. 16.
Vancouver is the only Canadian city showing the exhibit. It is due to show in Beijing this fall.
