The art on display around Adrian Cho's Edmonton home is not framed or first-edition. It is not Impressionist or even IKEA.
Many of the pieces are from Japan, and a few of them can run faster than a speeding bullet.
Mr. Cho, who has sprinkled his living space with action figures and anime creations, is one of a growing number of Canadians who view Spiderman and Transformer toys as acceptable accents to their home decor.
"We've always idolized art in some way: now it's just a Robocop instead of Rodin," said the 30-year-old video game designer.
It used to be that grown men who collected action figures did so on the down low. If they had their Star Wars figurines on display they were relegated to a "nerd room," a private space generally in the basement and always out of sight to guests.
But with the mainstream success of superhero franchises in Hollywood and the nerdification of culture in general, action figures have come out of the closet and are increasingly finding a place of pride on walls and mantels.
"There's sort of a nerd chic thing now," said Mr. Cho, who did his master's thesis on the action figure as artistic artifact. "We're not necessarily less cultured, but our focus is different. Pop culture and cross-promotional products are huge."
Bruno Bornsztein, a designer and founder of Curbly.com, an online community for DIY home decor, agrees that the celebration of all things geek has infiltrated people's homes.
"I have seen more people tricking out their house with comic book stuff," he said. "People feel more freedom showing off interests that would have embarrassed them before."
Part of the reason, he said, is that both comics and action figures have become more visually appealing.
Ratty cartoons have been replaced by bound graphic novels and Star Trek figurines have been bumped off shelves by Japanese Munny dolls.
The line has been blurred, Mr. Bornsztein said, between "people who are geeky and people who are arty."
That said, not every action figure he has seen in someone's living room deserved to be there.
"Some of it is really cool aesthetically," he said. "But I'm not particularly into the hardcore stuff."
Jason Beck, a 38-year-old stand-up comedian from Winnipeg who collects Yoda figures, falls into the more extreme category of collectors.
In his late 20s he was inspired by nostalgia to recreate the collection of Star Wars toys he had as a kid, and now owns hundreds of dolls, sculptures and toys.
"Because I'm a comedian, the collection is a lot more accepted," he said. "People just think I'm wacky."
He would prefer to have his Yodas scattered around the house, with one large sculpture beside a plant "because it looks like he's on planet Dagobah," but said his collection has been relegated to a single room by his girlfriend.
"She really wanted to get a house so I said, 'Okay, but I want a Yoda room,' " he said. "She went along with it."
Mr. Cho, too, said his girlfriend is understanding of his decor decisions.
"She knew if she wanted me, the toys come too," he said.
In their own way, both men are following the lead of other cultural institutions that have embraced animation and action-figure-inspired content as legitimate artistic enterprise.
The Art Institute of Fort Lauderdale has a touring exhibition of limited edition toys called SubCultures: The Art of the Action Figure.
The Museum of Modern Art in New York owns work by comic artist Art Spiegelman, and the Art Gallery of Ontario owns pieces by Canadian graphic novelist Seth.
Douglas Coupland has integrated pop culture into his work with furniture design, and The Art Hotel in Berlin has a popular "Comic" room, where every corner and angle is outlined with a thin black line so that guests have the effect of being in a cartoon.
