Three piglets were stolen from an art exhibition in Copenhagen over the weekend after a provocative artist said they would be allowed to starve to death in a commentary about animal welfare in Denmark, one of the world’s largest pork exporters.

The artist, Marco Evaristti, said in an interview on Monday that his exhibition, “And Now You Care?,” was meant to “wake up the Danish society” to the mistreatment of pigs, pointing to statistics that tens of thousands of pigs die each day because of poor conditions.

“I have some kind of voice as an artist to talk about the issue,” Evaristti, 62, said. “So I will share my thoughts about what I think about the treatment of the animals in Denmark.”

The exhibition, which opened on Friday inside a former butcher’s warehouse in the Meatpacking District of Copenhagen, included three live piglets that were caged by two shopping carts on a pile of straw. Large-scale paintings of the Danish flag and slaughtered pigs hung on the walls.

The pigs, which were given water but no food, were expected to live up to five days. Evaristti said he also would not eat or drink until the exhibition came to an end.

But the pigs did not die. They disappeared.

Evaristti, who was born in Chile, said that while the exhibition space was being cleaned on Saturday morning, members of an animal rights organization came to check on the piglets. Shortly after they left, the theft occurred.