Protests over ‘please walk on me' flag artwork prompt its removal from gallery

Irish Examiner

a day ago

A New Zealand flag printed with the words 'please walk on me' and placed on the floor of an art gallery has once again been packed away following a public outcry, 30 years after protests forced the removal of the same artwork.
The Suter Art Gallery in the city of Nelson said it had taken down the work by Maori artist Diane Prince due to escalating tensions and safety fears.
The episode mirrored an Auckland gallery's removal of the work amid a public backlash in 1995.
This time, the flag was meant to remain on display for five months. Instead, it lasted just 19 days, reigniting long-running debates in New Zealand over artistic expression, national symbols and the country's colonial history.
Police told the Associated Press that officers were investigating 'several' complaints about the exhibition.
I don't call myself a New Zealander. I call myself a Maori
The piece, titled Flagging The Future, is a cloth New Zealand flag displayed on the floor with the words 'please walk on me' stencilled across it.
The work was part of an exhibition, Diane Prince: Activist Artist, and was meant to provoke reflection on the Maori experience since New Zealand's colonisation by Britain in the 19th century.
Ms Prince created the piece in 1995 in response to a government policy that limited compensation to Maori tribes for historical land theft.
'I have no attachment to the New Zealand flag,' she told Radio New Zealand in 2024. 'I don't call myself a New Zealander. I call myself a Maori.'
New Zealand's reckoning with its colonial past has gathered pace in recent decades. But there has been little appetite among successive governments to sever the country's remaining constitutional ties to Britain or change the flag's design.
New Zealand is among countries where desecrating the national flag is considered taboo and prohibited by law. Damaging a flag in public with intent to dishonour it is punishable by a fine of up to 5,000 New Zealand dollars, but prosecutions are fleetingly rare.
This should not be interpreted as a judgment on the artwork or the artist's intent
As in the United States and elsewhere, the country's flag is synonymous for some with military service. But for others, particularly some Maori, it is a reminder of land dispossession, and loss of culture and identity.
Protests against the artwork in the city of Nelson, which has a population 55,000, included videos posted to social media by a local woman, Ruth Tipu, whose grandfather served in the army's Maori Battalion during the Second World War.
In one clip, she is seen lifting the flag from the floor and draping it over another artwork, an action Ms Tipu said she would repeat daily.
A veterans' group also denounced the piece as 'shameful' and 'offensive'. City council member Tim Skinner said he was 'horrified' by the work's inclusion.
But others welcomed it. Nelson's deputy mayor, Rohan O'Neill-Stevens, posted on social media 'in strong defence of artistic expression and the right for us all to be challenged and confronted by art'.
The work was perhaps expected to provoke controversy and in the exhibition's opening days, the Suter Gallery defended its inclusion. But a statement on its Facebook page late Thursday said a 'sharp escalation in the tone and nature of the discourse, moving well beyond the bounds of respectful debate' had prompted the flag's removal.
'This should not be interpreted as a judgment on the artwork or the artist's intent,' the statement said.