Read the full list on The Post website.
Compound Press author Hana Pera Aoake (some helpful models of grief, 2025; A bathful of kawakawa and hot water, 2020) provides much needed nuance surrounding the controversy of Diane Prince’s artwork ‘Flagging the Future: Te Kiritangata’.
Exhibited for the first time in 1995, the work consists in part of a $2 shop New Zealand flag, stencilled with the words “Please walk on me”, placed on the gallery floor. Two recent re-stagings of this work in 2025 at Te Aratoi o Whakatū The Suter Art Gallery in Nelson and Te Whare Toi o Heretaunga Hastings Art Gallery resulted in public outcry from reactionaries who fail to consider the contexts of historical injustice and art as an element of protest response.
In an opinion piece for The Post, Aoake provides some much needed nuance to a discussion that has been dominated by misinformation, ignorance, and bad faith.
Criticism of Prince’s work often feels like manufactured outrage – clickbait that ignores her intent and dismisses the breadth of her practice as an artist, weaver, and activist.
Art is not merely decorative; it should challenge thinking, even when uncomfortable. Voices like Diane Prince’s are essential if we are to imagine a fairer, more equitable future.
We cannot move forward and learn to live together if we do not understand the histories that got us to this point. The fact that this work is receiving the same criticism it did 30 years ago and continues to touch a nerve reveals how far we have left to go.
This artwork is travelling as part of the exhibition Diane Prince: Activist Artist. An artist monograph based on this exhibition and Prince’s wider artistic career is under development with Compound Press.
