Protecting “Paradise”: Anti-Nuclear Textiles in New Zealand

Abstract

The defining feature of the nuclear-free movement in New Zealand was people power: a groundswell of popular support which achieved a major change in government policy and became a turning point in our national identity. Creative expression was crucial to building visibility for the cause. By looking at the textiles produced at this time, we can both read the history of the movement and understand how New Zealanders saw ourselves and our place in the Pacific. Banners, fabric prints, and t-shirts used conventional protest messaging like peace signs and caricatures of key political figures. But it is the imagery chosen to support these messages which echoes a wider conversation in New Zealand’s identity as a Pacific nation. In the 1980s and 1990s, an emerging “Pasifika” movement in craft and fashion adopted Pacific Island imagery to create a unique New Zealand style. Anti-nuclear textile designs formed a part of this, drawing upon the romanticized image of palm-tree-fringed islands, a natural paradise in which grotesque mushroom clouds had no place. This article considers how anti-nuclear textiles are a visible creative record of New Zealand’s changing self-identity.