" A line, it has been said, is a child's first instrument of depiction, the boundary where one thing ends and the other begins. The map reduces the country to a single line, a sudden, magical configuration. Making sense of the map was like discovering gold." Alan Atkinson, Symbols of Australia: uncovering the stories behind the myths. At the end of last year I received a photo of my 18 year old niece, holidaying in Egypt. She is wearing a black T-shirt with a bright coloured map representing the three main Islands that form New Zealand, one of a series sold as part of a fundraiser for breast cancer services. She is sitting in the umber-toned foreground to Egypt's Great Pyramid - a young woman off a green New Zealand farm in absolutely alien territory. The photograph is itself an archetype for families in New Zealand where an 'OE' (overseas experience) is an almost mandatory rite of passage for young men and women as a way of overcoming New Zealand's isolation at the 'bottom edge of the world'. The presence of the New Zealand map in the image embodies multilayered meanings and associations: its simple rendering, created through a repetition of coloured circles reflects the degree of simplification and abstraction capable while still maintaining recognition; its use by the Cancer Society as both a symbol of national unity in support of its cause and as a motif designed to have aesthetic appeal when applied to a fashion item; it is an evocation of 'home' for my niece, with the additional link to her mother who is a recent breast cancer survivor, and, as well a reflection of her desire for connection with home that acts as a public declaration of her own sense of national identity.
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