Museum Removes Māori Artist’s Work Inviting Viewers to Walk on New Zealand Flag

A art museum has removed an artwork composed of New Zealand’s national flag printed with a message that invited viewers to walk on it.

The artwork, a new version of a 1995 piece titled Flagging the Future, was on view in a solo show for artist Diane Prince (Ngā Puhi, Ngāti Whatua and Ngāti Kahu) at the Suter Art Gallery in Nelson. The show was organized by the Pātaka Art + Museum in Porirua City, which experienced no such controversy for exhibiting the work last year.

In addition to a flag printed with the words “PLEASE WALK ON ME,” the piece also includes an assortment of found objects. The 1995 version included korari, a form of flax that is common New Zealand, and harakeke flowers, which Māori communities have woven to form mats, clothes, and baskets.

This week, the Prince piece gained negative attention in the New Zealand media when Ruth Tipu, a Nelson resident, said she would pick the flag up off the ground every day in protest of the work.

“When they come into the gallery and they they see our flag on the ground, and it says, ‘please walk on me’, it distresses my heart,” Tipu told the Nelson Mail. “That’s not what we are, that’s not what we stand for. And that flag, it deserves more.”

The publication reported that Tipu’s koro—her grandfather—served in the Māori Battalion during World War II.

After that report appeared and video of Tipu picking up the flag began circulating on social media, the museum said it would remove the piece. “Since the exhibition opened, Flagging the Future has generated significant public response,” the museum wrote on Facebook on Thursday. “While many have engaged with the work thoughtfully and respectfully, recent days have seen a sharp escalation in the tone and nature of the discourse, moving well beyond the bounds of respectful debate.”

Moreover, the museum said, “This should not be interpreted as a judgement on the artwork or the artist’s intent. We continue to support freedom of expression and the vital role that art plays in reflecting and shaping national conversations in a democratic society.”

Flag desecration is punishable in New Zealand by a fine of up to 5,000 New Zealand dollars ($2,984).

Prince has previously used the New Zealand flag in her work before, though the 1995 version of Flagging the Future remains her most famous piece in that vein. When it appeared at the Auckland City Art Gallery that year, Prince said she intended as a protest against Prime Minister Jim Bolger’s administration, which sought to severely limit the rights of Māori communities.

“I am not an artist,” Prince said at the time, preferring to call herself an activist. “The flag is just a protest work suitable for display.”

The work is so storied that, in 2023, in Art News Aotearoa (which is not affiliated with ARTnews), writer Hana Pera Aoake (Ngaati Hinerangi, Ngaati Mahuta, Tainui/Waikato, Ngaati Waewae) said the work had “a profound significance for me,” even though she professed to never having personally seen it.

The Associated Press reported that the New Zealand police was investigating complaints about the Suter Art Gallery exhibition, though it was not looking into any disturbances.

Online, the response to the Prince piece has divided politicians. Tim Skinner, a Nelson city councilor, wrote on Facebook that he had made a “formal complaint” to the museum. “This is more than disrespectful,” he wrote earlier this week, prior to the removal. “I do not condone standing on any recognised nations flag.”

Rohan O’Neill Stevens, deputy mayor of Nelson, took a different view. “I understand why people react so strongly to the invitation to walk on the flag, the offence and indignation,” he wrote on Facebook. “But within that there’s a powerful invitation to explore that offence, to explore what it means when a government puts a fixed price tag on generations of harm, to ask if how you feel might at all correspond to how it feels to have a government unilaterally attempt to rewrite the treaty or to ignore the systems put in place to avoid further breaches.”