The Suter Art Gallery in the city of Nelson said on Thursday it had taken down the work by Māori artist Diane Prince due to escalating tensions and safety fears.

The episode mirrored an Auckland gallery’s removal of the work amid public backlash and complaints to law enforcement 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 on Friday that officers were investigating “several” complaints about the exhibition.

The piece, titled Flagging the Future, is a cloth New Zealand flag displayed on the floor with the words “please walk on me” stenciled across it. The flag features the British Union Jack and red stars on a blue background.

The work was part of an exhibition, Diane Prince: Activist Artist, and was meant to provoke reflection on the Māori experience since New Zealand’s colonisation by Britain in the 19th century. Prince created the piece in 1995 in response to a government policy that limited compensation to Māori tribes for historical land theft.

“I have no attachment to the New Zealand flag,” Prince told Radio New Zealand in 2024.

“I don’t call myself a New Zealander. I call myself a Māori.”

Prince couldn’t be reached immediately for comment on Friday.

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 to a design that doesn’t feature the Union Jack.

Why did the art strike a nerve?

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 dishonor it is punishable by a fine of up to $NZ5000 ($4637), but prosecutions are fleetingly rare.

As in the United States and elsewhere, the country’s flag is synonymous for some with military service. But for others, particularly some Māori, it’s a reminder of land dispossession, and loss of culture and identity.

Protests of the artwork in the city of Nelson, population 55,000, included videos posted to social media by a local woman, Ruth Tipu, whose grandfather served in the army’s Māori Battalion during World War II. In one clip, she is seen lifting the flag from the floor and draping it over another artwork, an action 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”.

Why did the gallery remove it?

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 on 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 judgement on the artwork or the artist’s intent,” the statement said.

The gallery didn’t detail specific incidents of concern and a gallery spokesperson didn’t respond to a request for an interview on Friday.

New Zealand’s Police said in a statement on Friday that while officers were investigating complaints, they weren’t called to any disturbances at the exhibition. Prince said when she revived the work in 2024 that threats of prosecution by law enforcement had prompted its removal from the Auckland gallery in 1995.

The Nelson gallery didn’t suggest in its statement that police involvement had influenced Thursday’s decision.