Theatre of the World exhibition at the Walker Art Center. Image: visualarts.walkerart.org

Theatre of the World, an exhibit by renowned Chinese artist Huang Yong Ping at the Vancouver Art Gallery has been pulled after demands by the B.C Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

“What’s happened here is that two important values have clashed — one is the right to artistic expression and the other is the importance of the humane treatment of animals,” said Peter Fricker, a spokesman for the Vancouver Humane Society. “And in our view, the inhumane treatment of animals is going to trump artistic expression every time.”

Read the full story HERE.

Huang Yong Ping is one of the most influential contemporary Chinese artists working today. The exhibition at the Vancouver Art Gallery showcases “paintings, drawings and sculptural installations that evoke the fun house, diorama and menagerie…(celebrating) an artist whose work elegantly traverses the divide between East and West, tradition and the avant-garde.”

Theatre of the World at the Walker Art Center. Image: visualarts.walkerart.org

Far be it from VoCA to get involved in animal-rights issues, but it does appear that people who make the story entirely into one about animal rights have missed the point of the artwork.

Contemporary art should - if it is successful - make the viewer reflect upon his own circumstances. To deflect the idea of animal cruelty, of humans manipulating nature and of the many other things that this installation evokes is to return to the state of denial that Western society quite happily lives in.

Theatre of the World at the Walker Art Centre. Image: visualarts.walkerart.org

Chinese contemporary art has always been harsh - likely a reflection of the harsh environment (political and social) that exists there. In many non-Western cultures, life sits easily, closely beside death. Art must make room for alternate points of view, or much of its power is lost.

VoCA calls for fewer emotional outbursts, more thoughtful consideration.