YOUR EX’s Oliver Hall speaks with Milly Mitchell-Anyon, curator at The Dowse Art Museum, about Flaming Star, a brash, shimmering exhibition that reimagines the myth of the cowboy through queer, Indigenous, and feminist lenses.
At The Dowse in Lower Hutt, cowboys are kissing, saddles are shimmering, and bolo ties are coming gloriously undone. Flaming Star is a camp, seductive, and unruly exhibition that queers the American Western — and curator Milly Mitchell-Anyon is gleefully holding the reins.
Flaming Star borrows its title from Elvis Presley’s 1960 ballad — a crooning cowboy anthem steeped in masculinity and fate.
“I’ve been obsessed with cowboys for a while,” Mitchell-Anyon admits
“But it became a full-on affliction after Lil Nas X released Old Town Road.” For her, that viral cultural moment exposed how flexible, even fragile, the cowboy image really is. “You could see the breakdown of gender norms, masculinity, and the blurring of lines over what is and isn’t country music. Because everyone is so familiar with the stereotype of the cowboy.”
Flaming Star takes that familiarity and twists it into new forms. The result is cowboy as drag — a powerful reimagination that unsettles colonial narratives, queers the frontier, and invites audiences to explore new modes of identity, performance, and power. “The idea of the cowboy is deeply escapist and problematic,” she adds.
“So I wanted to curate a show that interpreted it through a queer, Indigenous or feminist lens – through the work of contemporary artists from Aotearoa.”
The exhibition features eight artists, each pushing the frontier myth into wild new territory. In Cowboy Motel, Arapeta Hākura takes the rural queer archetype by the horns, populating their motel with glitter-dusted cowboy guardians and a flock of members under their watchful, shirtless gaze. It’s sensual, tongue-in-cheek, and reverent all at once. Bec Agnew unspools a stop-motion spaghetti western where cowboy Barbies drift through a surreal, phallic landscape of cacti and confusion — a coming-of-age tale dripping in camp and critique. And in Christopher Ulutupu’s short film, a soap opera meets Ghost Hunters as choker-wearing cowboy spirits haunt a colonial mansion, blending melodrama, mystery, and desire in a parallel cowboy universe.
Each artist was chosen with intention. “For Flaming Star, it was about remembering artists I’d seen and loved, or whose practices I knew would resonate,” Mitchell-Anyon explains. “I kept thinking about Michael Haggie’s drawings of gay cowboys I saw in Whanganui years ago — they were so compelling. Now, he has over thirty drawings in the show, from Brokeback Mountain-style pashing scenes, to BDSM swagger, to a cowboy in a little black dress.”
Camp and desire simmer just below the surface of the show — but it also runs deeper, tackling appropriation and colonial legacies. Ming Ranginui’s silky, rhinestone-laced saddles reclaim the cowboy from its colonial function. “They’re like luscious Trojan horses,” Mitchell-Anyon says. “They draw you in with ruched satin and rhinestones, evoking labial folds, but they completely divorce the saddle from its utilitarian use. It’s fantasy over function.” Ranginui’s work is partially rooted in her own discomfort working in a haberdashery store, where she watched Pākehā customers buy materials to make DIY kākahu. “That stayed with her, and the saddles flip that appropriation back.”
Meanwhile, Sandy Gibbs brings wit and provocation. In one gallery corner, two cowboys ride gyrating mechanical bulls in slow motion, while a fountain spurts water in a cheeky, erotic loop. “Humour is such a useful and underrated tool,” says Mitchell-Anyon.
“You don’t have to have a PhD in gender theory to understand what’s happening. Even if you’re not familiar with Judith Butler, you see it: masculinity is performative. Gender is performative. Everything is drag.”
From the emo-country tones of Melanie Tangaere Baldwin’s ode to Patsy Cline, to Keri-Mei Zagrobelna’s bolo ties and sheriff badges repurposed to reckon with ongoing colonial violence, Flaming Star traverses genre, identity, and time. It wrangles camp, grief, desire, and critique all within the seductive fantasy of ‘the West.’
Mitchell-Anyon is clear: Flaming Star isn’t about nostalgia. It’s about rupture. “You work out pretty quickly what excites you when putting shows together,” she says. “You just have to be yourself, and that’s always reflected in the exhibition.”
Flaming Star is on at The Dowse Art Museum, Lower Hutt, until 9 November 2025. Entry is free.
