An Inflating Identity

How one artist is reclaiming the maiden, the mother and the crone through inflatable art pieces  

Photos / Luka Maresca

Vibrant oranges, pinks, teals and reds splash across Massey University's Engine Room walls where artists from Tocayo Collective display their work. The artworks breathe stories of identity and history. Their whispers echo Mexican culture, a homage to the collective’s Prime Minister Scholarship trip last year.  

Within the exhibition on show earlier this month, Floración de Corazón, movement from two large inflatable flowers draws attention. Fine Arts Master’s student Noa Noa Von Bassewitz is the artist behind these works, exploring the third stage of female becoming through art. These vibrant sculptures reflect an open heart and a portal between life and death, murmuring these meanings throughout the space.

She draws on the analogy of the maiden, mother and crone — an ancient archetype symbolising the female life cycle. Noa Noa specifically focuses on reclaiming the crone figure, particularly with her use of materials. Using second-hand parachutes, Noa Noa says she is “taking what would be waste material and reimaging them as something beautiful”.  

Growing up as the daughter of an Art teacher, Noa Noa has always been an artist. Working primarily in woodblock printmaking, she went full-time into her practice when her youngest child started school seven years ago. After hitting a wall during the pandemic, she felt constrained by the medium. 

“I’ve got this thing that I want to talk about in the world that’s too big for the canvas.” 

After enrolling in Massey’s Fine Arts course as an adult, she experimented with metal knot frames but found them unsustainable for her body and practice. Only after discovering inflatable art did she stumble across a website that sold retired parachutes.  

“I ordered a couple with no idea what to do! I got all sorts of weird-shaped ones. It took me two or three weeks just to go ‘what is this?’” 

She expanded her printmaking background into large-scale inflatable performance sculptures, using a technique called auto-archaeology — where you interpret an idea or story across different contexts.  

Noa Noa finds inspiration negatively perceived feminine tales in mythology and children’s books. She re-visits these stories through new lenses, asking: “Where did this start? Who told this tale? Why is this the narrative? What if we retold it for a different purpose?” 

A project she worked on last year, Mama Maunga (a mountain of motherhood), used muted monochromatic parachutes. The fabric was lined with poetry, voicing the feelings of guilt about the world she would leave for her children. The pieces became a process of building a mountain within herself. 

After traveling to Mexico last year with the Tocayo Collective as part of the Prime Minister’s Scholarship, she says the trip brought colour and life to her mountain. It became a journey of self-discovery in a place that, while entirely foreign, felt strangely familiar. 

“Mexico made me look at all my shadowy crevices and face my fears … ruins and cycles, that’s what we’re all about. I can break and I can rebuild.” 

Over the year, her work has evolved into something that represents not just the physical, but also the emotional and energetic of a woman whose parts are reassembling.  

“I needed to figure out how to embrace, reframe, and rewrite the narrative of what this part of my life is going to be. I don’t want to be spent. I don’t want to be invisible. I don’t want to be belittled because I’m going through changes.”  

Some of this work was shown in the Floración de Corazón exhibition as a homage to the Tocayo Collective’s trip to Mexico. As the last group to experience the opportunity before the budget cut the Prime Minister’s scholarship programme, the exhibition serves as a heartfelt celebration to Mexico’s rich culture. 

Now, Noa Noa is focused on her Master’s thesis, Te Kākano o Te Ngākau (The Seeds of the Heart), which follows the feminine life cycle of maiden, mother, and crone. In February, she planted harakeke seeds to mark the birth of the project, approximating nine months before the showing later this year at Massey’s Great Hall. This exhibition will be held later this year, showcasing 11 of her works. Her art will be combined with projection, lighting, and an audio piece put together by her eldest son. 

Noa Noa says many of her pieces have already lived multiple lives. The process involves making and unmaking, leaving the work in flux until it feels ready. Just like the seeds she planted, her artwork will bloom and call her name when they’re ready to harvest.  

Her work grows, transforms, and comes alive on its own terms.