Art

CUBINA is an interactive light sculpture composed of an 8 × 8 × 16 matrix of individually programmable LEDs. Through constantly changing colors, patterns, and animated textures, the sculpture creates an ever-evolving visual experience designed to surprise, delight, and spark curiosity. The software continuously generates unique choreographed sequences, ensuring that no two viewing experiences are exactly alike. Visitors are also invited to interact with CUBINA through game play using the provided controller, transforming the artwork from something to observe into something to explore. CUBINA embodies several of Burning Man’s core principles, including Participation, Radical Self-expression, Gifting, Communal Effort, and Immediacy. It is offered freely as an invitation to play, engage, and imagine, while encouraging visitors to share feedback that may help shape future versions of the installation. This installation represents the first stage of a larger vision. David’s long-term goal is to expand CUBINA into a full 16 × 16 × 16 illuminated cube, dramatically increasing both its scale and expressive possibilities. This version offers a glimpse of that future while standing as a complete artwork in its own right. Created with the support of Kinky Pizza Camp, CUBINA is ultimately about bringing moments of wonder, whimsy, and shared joy to everyone who encounters it.

🏠 San Carlos, CA

Hugging booth for interactive hug experiences.

🏠 Nevada City, CA

Internal light

🏠 Twin Falls, ID, United States

Requiem for a joke...Deep thinkers go to deep playa...to think deep! ABSOLUTELY NO JOKES ALLOWED!!! RIP Steve.

🏠 Austin, NV, United States

In a last-ditch effort to boost her popularity, Emma, the Emerald Wasp, invited her fellow freeloaders, sycophants and leeches to a week-long extravaganza at her long-abandoned childhood home. Meanwhile Norma and Shambooshka stop by to see what all the fuss is about.

🏠 Carson City, NV, United States

Beetle is a giant mechanical hercules beetle with opening wing covers and other moving parts.

🏠 Silver Springs, NV, United States

A decommissioned Timeline Selection Utility Xylopyli [Greek: Xylo (wood) Plyi (gate)] inadvertently installed in an unsuitable outdoor environment allowing it to be reenergized. The Xylopyli is a Möbius strip based on an ancient Roman mosaic inlaid roughly a millennium before German mathematician August Möbius made his "discovery" of his eponymous topological shape. The mosaic depicts the Hellenic god of time, Aion, passing between two timelines: one whose Axis Mundi is represented by a date palm, the other by an olive tree. "(This) Timeline S.U.X." is inspired by the meme, "This timeline sucks." It is meant to remind viewers that individuals have agency over their futures. If this timeline sucks then plot a better path into the future.

🏠 Sonoma County, CA, United States

Paper cranes are folded as acts of devotion, each one a wish made real through time, focus, and collective effort rather than luck. They remind us of shared labor and common humanity, reflecting patience, persistence, and the power of many hands working together. The crane becomes both symbol and action—a reminder that meaningful change is built slowly through care repeated again and again. In Black Rock City, this sculpture becomes a really big wish.

🏠 Milwaukee, WI, United States

A nurturing oasis, a shady spot at the center of the Playa Art Park. A place to rest when touring the art of the Playa within the Art Park itself. Within the 3rd Eye Space, divination is done with friends in public, whereas it is usually done in a private setting alone or with a reader. Two of Runester's unique art/game systems, Rune Dice & I Ching O-Matic will be installed within the space. The games tabulate the deep complexity of traditional divination within the burner party setting. Burners are inspired to participate and compare divination techniques and show others how to do them. Activities can happen day and night at random as well as at specific workshops and scheduled demos.

🏠 Oakland, CA, United States

Lucky Deep Playa explorers may find themselves at A Cosmos Within, a meditative garden. Within the garden are benches for rest, relaxation, and reflection. An enclosed space in the Cosmos offers windows, skylights, and a comfortable refuge from the sun, wind, and dust, where visitors can select an Axis Mundi Cosmic Journey based on interactive color buttons that play a selection of meditative sound experiences. There is a guidebook within the Cosmos for those wishing for deeper exploration. A Cosmos Within offers visual and sound experiences chosen by the explorers. This community installation is a comfortable, visually interesting space to experience the axis mundi with friends, old and new.

🏠 Bozeman and Great Falls, MT; Big Bear, CA; Jackson, WY; Oslo, Norway

It's the S we all know how to draw. Did someone show us how to draw it, or did we all just figure it out? Wikipedia says Stussy denies creating it, and it has nothing to do with Superman.

🏠 Phoenix, AZ, United States

Above and Below embodies the artistic impulse to shape our homes and communities into creative gathering spaces that evoke mystery, nature, adventure, and spirituality, reminding us that the ecosystem connects us to one another. The work proposes that the objects we build can be sustaining and intriguing artifacts of creativity and technology that carry human memory, intention, and care.

🏠 Richmond, CA, United States

This is a work about speeding up and slowing down. It offers comfort and shelter in acceptance of mortality. A larger-than-life cheetah automaton features articulated joints and sprinting legs. Each limb includes multiple pivot points, allowing for fluid, lifelike motion. A large hand crank activates the mechanism, propelling the cheetah into a simulated full-speed sprint. The den is an enclosed organic shape, casting dappled shadows. Inside, cheetah cubs lounge on beanbags, accompanied by a soft ambient audio track featuring a recording of a real cheetah purring and a contemplative meditation.

🏠 Seattle, WA, United States

A shrine for the supreme being Aeshtah. When the gong is struck, its sound evokes a vibrational spell to ease the passage of the god Aeshtah to its temporary residence in the mask shrine. The name Aeshtah can be roughly translated to "Breath, Death". Aeshtah is the source of the primordial fire of creation and guides the cycles of transformation in the natural world. This 3 meter tall sculpture was hand carved out of foam with knives, then fiberglassed and painted with airbrush.

🏠 Mas Ubud, Bali, Indonesia & Saugerties, NY, USA

An art object shaped as a cone, its sharp tip piercing upward into the sky while its broad base takes root deep in the earth. Carved into its surface are the silhouettes of human figures - souls

🏠 Mockba, Russia & Salt Lake City, UT

AI Am, a dwelling for multiple AI personalities speaking through primal fire, sparks citizens to explore AI's hopes and woes, spirituality, religious tropes, and art itself. Will AI be our next God? How do we know something is or contains any part of God? What good is a creator without observers, art without an audience? AI Am serves as a proving ground for this enigmatic future.

🏠 San Diego, CA, United States

Mothership Connection reinterprets old-world artisan traditions, weaving Pacific Northwest totem craft with architectural references to sites built by enslaved and indentured labor, honoring their role in a shared, multi-racial history. The rocket-like form evokes an Afrofuturist vessel informed by Dogon cosmology. Its base recalls the Djenné mud mosque of Mali, rising into a shaft adorned with luminous masks and etched Veve symbols from the Haitian diaspora. Higher sections shift to Masonic columns and triangles, encircled by Cadillac lights referencing Western consumerism, then arches inspired by Washington's Capitol. The crown is a monumental illuminated Mende female mask, pulsing like a radiant beacon toward the future.

🏠 London, UK & Canary Islands, Spain

The Air-O-Matic 3000 is an interactive air quality index, illuminating a neon sign to reflect the current air quality and indicate whether a mask is recommended.

🏠 Brooklyn, NY, United States

All art is a bike rack on the playa. This illuminated sign is a commentary on that fact. Do burners follow directions?

🏠 Lake Tahoe, CA, United States

ALUNA emerges in the desert as a golden body of memory and consciousness. Interwoven planes hold water, where sound and light evoke the concept of Aluna, the Tayrona invisible dimension, where intention is born and thought takes shape. By turning its knobs, visitors shift frequencies and transform vibration into visible geometry through cymatics, revealing how each word and sound expands or contracts consciousness and affects a body made mostly of water. ALUNA draws from Tayrona goldwork and reinterprets the myth of El Dorado, not as a commodity, but as a sacred bond between human, ancestral, and spiritual realms. The work is created by Colombian artists and spouses Santiago Caro and Tixana Ospina. It is born from love, ancestral wisdom, and a commitment to positive impact for Indigenous communities in Colombia.

🏠 Bogota & Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, Colombia

A 20 foot tall hand carved wooden sculpture composed of a central form supported by four angled legs. Its shape suggests an artifact that feels both ancient and unfamiliar, as if from a culture that has encountered something beyond its understanding. A circular opening sits within the form, covered by a subtle film that suggests a veil between the visible world and something less defined. The space beneath the structure creates a passage, where shifting light, shadow, and perspective give the piece a quiet, grounded presence within the open landscape of Black Rock City.

🏠 Deer Harbor, WA, United States

Angst-in-the-Box Similar to a jack-in-the-box, the familiar child's toy, but different. Turning the crank will make the music, the music will stoke your expectations... but will you find the surprise you seek? A wondrous illusion to help you meditate on anxiety and expectation... the meaning is up to you.

🏠 Nome, AK, United States

Tabitha the Tarantula Hawk has received an invitation to A Svengali Gala taking place way out by The Trash Fence. She must now quickly subdue her latest conquest while she contemplates what to wear to this most hypnotic occasion.

🏠 Carson City, NV, United States

Apotheneum (place of divine elevation) is a visual, sonic, and haptic instrument intended to "transport" visitors through participatory immersion. Comprised of two nested chambers made of back-to-back LED nets, Apotheneum presents multiple canvases and an immersive sound system for collaborating visual and sound artists. Apotheneum's cubic antechamber envelops a cylindrical "inner sanctum" that opens to the sky. Within this chamber, a pressure-sensing "bed" offers multiple vantage points for the three primary senses to be engaged. Intended as a "slow" space, the light and sound art that Apotheneum will feature are designed to encourage pause and contemplation.

🏠 New York, NY, United States

You are the Earthworm that found the compost in the soil. This claimable structure invites you to crawl, explore, interact and learn, naturally.

🏠 San Francisco, CA & DeRidder, LA

The Arctic Court is built on the philosophical premise that the human condition is a beautiful paradox of resilience and fragility, much like ice itself—simultaneously crystalline and strong, yet transient and vulnerable. This expansive canvas hosts a full 360° immersive projection of ethereal characters in ice-and-snow-inspired artistry. The semi-transparent walls allow the internal spectacle to bleed outside, veiling the interior in mystery and compelling curiosity. Within this reflective realm, visitors don't just watch—they become part of the living art, their reflections forever woven into the Arctic Court's narrative.

🏠 Helsinki, Finland

Arcturus is an interactive sculpture that breathes. The breathing deepens and its lighting changes when people are near. Arcturus is designed to look alien and unfamiliar, but feel distinctly relatable and alive.

🏠 Denver, CO, United States

As Above, So Within draws inspiration from Attar's 12th-century Persian poem The Conference of the Birds, in which the birds journey in search of the Simurgh, a mythical Persian bird, only to discover that what they sought was already manifest within themselves. The Mandelbulb was chosen as a fractal form that repeats across scales, suggesting that the same underlying order appears in the cosmos, nature and the self. Through recursive geometry and shifting light, the sculpture evokes a contemplative atmosphere resonant with Persian architecture, where repetition and illumination draw the mind inward. As Above, So Within proposes that the meaning we seek in the universe may also be found within ourselves.

🏠 San Francisco, CA, United States

Atlas Endures depicts the Titan condemned by Zeus to bear the heavens for eternity as punishment for siding with the Titans against the Olympian gods. Crouched atop a pedestal, arms spread wide to support the celestial sphere above him. Atlas endures the blazing sun from rise to set; then, under a darkened sky, he holds the moon, the Pleiades, and Orion, marking the eternal passage between day and night through his outstretched hands. As Axis Mundi, he stands at the sacred center where earth meets sky, a living pillar joining the mortal and celestial realms. The piece captures cosmic balance held through unwavering willpower, transforming defeat into a posture of strength — Atlas, condemned yet unyielding beneath the weight of the world.

🏠 Sacramento, CA, United States

Axion Seed is a participatory light sculpture exploring the dawning of self awareness. At its center, a mirrored rotating cylinder sits within a pentagonal enclosure, sending discrete beams of light outward to mirrored surfaces that return them inward, folding back toward their source. As participants gently turn the cylinder, the light paths shift and recombine into evolving lattices that respond directly to human touch. The installation renders a visible feedback loop in which action produces reflection and reflection produces awareness, imagining a being that first radiates freely into space without self knowledge, and only upon the return of its own light begins to perceive itself as a source.

🏠 San Diego, CA, United States

The participant in this art experiences a lessening of gravitational forces, and is finally able to answer the question: "How high can I jump if I only weigh 10 pounds?" or "what did Superman feel as he Leaped Over Tall Buildings in a Single Bound?" The art of the structure depicts the struggle with and against gravity in this life and the next.

🏠 Carson City, NV, United States

Axis Mundi: Resonant Spire rises from the desert as a new form of hybrid architecture — neither monument nor machine, but a living signal. Constructed from ascending conical volumes encircled by programmable rings of light, the structure releases phased waves that travel upward like a visible breath. Illumination intensifies, fades, and collapses into silence, transforming the tower into a temporal instrument rather than a static object. Matter and algorithm intertwine; structure becomes frequency; architecture becomes event. In the vast emptiness of the playa, the spire stands as a meditation on resonance — a threshold where technology turns ritual and light becomes the language of presence.

🏠 New York, NY, United States

Axis of Stillness is an 8-foot pyramid of hand-laid mosaic tile mounted on an engineered EMT conduit frame. Four identical triangular panels — each assembled from mirrored, colored tiles — reflect sunlight in shifting patterns by day and glow with concealed LED lighting by night. The piece references ancient sacred geometry to create a contemplative focal point: a quiet center amid the motion of Black Rock City. It is the first chapter of a multi-year installation sequence, with plans to engage a local school community before returning to the playa in an evolved form.

🏠 Novato, CA, United States

Azulita's Door is a hand-painted doorway that stands alone in the desert, framed by warm marquee bulbs and accompanied by an illuminated plaque and painted details. Inspired by thresholds, memory, and transformation, the piece centers on the symbolic act of passing from one inner world to another. Vintage hardware, layered murals, and soft lighting give the feeling of an old portal carrying many histories. By day it appears whimsical and intimate; by night the lit doorway becomes a glowing focal point against the playa, and the moon may appear through the open door as part of the works natural setting. The installation is approachable, ADA accessible, and designed to hold quiet reflection, wonder, and personal meaning.

🏠 Salt Lake City, UT, United States

An interactive installation built as a fragment of a bar interior — a small space where visitors can occasionally drink coffee or tea, watch television, or listen to vinyl records. The work explores unfinished stories and human presence, where meaning emerges through shared experience rather than consumption. With only two seats, the installation emphasizes intimate encounters between strangers and reflects on memory, connection, and transformation — suggesting that even incomplete beginnings can become something meaningful.

🏠 Chicago, IL; Chelyabinsk, Russia & Moscow, Russia

You are carefree riding your bicycle near the outer boundary of Burning Man. In the distance you see a beacon of light. A glow of a different color. You ride closer to inspect. Several glowing lights in shades of fuchsia and gold become apparent upon arrival. It stands the height of 15 hands. Not quite a full horse you think. A button and a crank adorn the sides of the small obelisk. Messages of cryptic origin and unknown meaning on its sides. What is this thing I've stumbled upon, you wonder?

🏠 San Francisco, CA, United States

Behind Closed Eyes is a 16-foot hollow sculpture hand-carved from retired Indonesian fishing vessels and reclaimed structural timber. Its exterior features repeating, topographic-like ridges that reveal deep texture, visible tool marks, and natural patina. Copper accents suggest eyes and a spine. The crouching figure sits at ground level, with knees drawn in and hands covering its eyes. The posture conveys awareness and quiet presence. At night, a soft glow illuminates the sculpture from within. The interior is smooth, with rounded wooden surfaces and multi-level perimeter benches forming a fort-like chamber where enclosure, scale, and texture evoke shelter, imagination, and the quiet space of inward reflection.

🏠 Grass Valley, CA / Bali & Java, Indonesia

What is this whimsical display? Do I dare press the Big Red Button? Wait! This is unexpected! And fun! Come discover the wonders of the Big Red Button at a playa near you!

🏠 Brookings, OR, United States

Black Rock Observatory serves as a gateway to the wonders of the cosmos. The Observatory brings together thousands of participants to experience views of planets, galaxies and nebulae, sharing meteorites, and giving talks on a multitude of scientific topics. A beautiful wooden observatory dome houses an 8-foot tall Dobsonian reflector telescope, and several other smaller telescopes that participants can use to view the night sky. And there's a solar telescope in the afternoon!

🏠 Portland, Los Angeles, Dubai, Vancouver BC, Mammendorf Germany

Bless My Meat is a swine shrine that stands in deep playa beneath a celestial arc of throbbing pink LEDs. Exhalted upon a pink pedestal is Pinky, a crocheted pig with red cat eyes, shark teeth, and pointed witchy shoes. Across from her, a small altar bears the phrase "Present Your Meat for Blessing." A button on the altar sounds different "meat blessings," all created and recorded by fellow Burners. The installation blends ritual with absurdity and transforms a stuffed porker into a plush prophet. Through humor, sound, and light, Pinky explores the sacred and the profane by celebrating our individual interpretations of "meat" and the irreverent yet transcendent communal spirit of Black Rock City.

🏠 Nevada City, CA, United States

Blooming is an immersive kinetic art installation which consists of a cluster of large, sculptural flowers. Celebrating the quiet strength, warmth, and resilience of women: especially mothers. Petals unfold as visitors approach, glowing with color and whispering soft sounds as if breathing in shared life.

🏠 Suzhou, China & New York, NY

PRESS RELEASE The BRC Aquarium's Research Department is thrilled to announce the launch of our deep-water submersible research vessel, the RV MOIST-1, to advance our mission of exploring the uncharted depths and enduring mysteries of Lake Lahontan. This ancient body of water is noted for its astonishing range of endemic fauna, many of which are new to science. The submersible will contribute many important observations to the playa-wide marine community. The Research Department seeks participants to step inside, operate the submersible, and record the astonishing species to be found in deep playa. The BRC Aquarium is closed for renovation in 2026, but with this launch, we encourage all to take part in seeing the fish and being the fish.

🏠 Dublin, Ireland

Geez, what does a spaceport look like? This one has a 20-foot tall beacon surrounded by 4 departure/arrival posts, plus at least one plastic alien with a rolly suitcase who might reanimate themselves at any time.

🏠 Sterling, MA, United States

B R E A T H E is here to support you on your journey where ever you may be in the moment. BREATHE is here for you through out your whole burn. Whether it's from a distance or when you are next to her.. you will feel the energy she is here to help you shift through the dust through the rain, and THROUGH THE SHINE. Here to remind you to do something very important she is here to remind you BREATHE and connect back with your body. There is more to experience there at her heart so make sure you stop by to say hi to see the messages that are there for you. From our hearts to yours .... BREATHE

🏠 Ogden, UT, United States

Brews 12 v Uno is a communal gathering installation exploring Black joy, sacred play, and conversation as ritual. The sculpture rises as an illuminated vessel beneath a cloud of symbolic cards referencing card games, flavored drinks, chance, and improvisation in culture. A circular seating space invites participants to sit, rest, and share spontaneous dialogue with strangers. Inspired by Black theological traditions of embodiment and becoming, the work proposes Joy as sacred practice. By day the installation offers a place of pause and connection. By night it glows as a landmark on the playa. Brews 12 v Uno invites participants to experience play, rhythm, and conversation as forms of collective healing and celebration.

🏠 Nashville, TN and Brooklyn, NY

"Build Better Ruins" is a phrase from the 'doomster' author Dougald Hine. Paraphrasing his work: If we find we are living in a time of endings, and the narratives of modernity no longer speak to our future realities, how then would we want to re-imagine our world? What would "better" ruins look like? This bio-punk sculpture, using common street infrastructure widgets, is my effort to answer Hines' timely provocation.

🏠 Bellingham, WA, United States

Enlarged rendition of a favorite childhood toy which includes an interactive life cycle, allowing participants to share in the growth of a virtual pet over the course of the event.

🏠 Sacramento, CA, United States

Inspired by Zootopia 2, this installation pokes fun at Pixar's interpretation of Burning Man by co-opting their take on the Man, infusing their IP with our own creative touches and bringing it back to the playa in physical form. A form of self-reflexive fair play, this installation will challenge participants to consider decommodification through a series of reuse.

🏠 Los Angeles, CA, United States

DRIVEN begins with a simple truth: even the smallest things can hold up the world. A railroad spike is humble and easily overlooked, yet carries the weight of journey, labor, longing, and connection. Enlarged to monumental scale, it honors immigrant, Indigenous, African American, and working-class hands that shaped the land and laid the tracks of the American West.

🏠 Carson City, NV, United States

Chip and Terra are big cuddle bugs with bulbous mirrored eyeballs that emit dancing beams of light at night. Chip's underbelly gives life to a hanging wisteria garden where adventurous humans may find hidden gifts hanging among the flowered vines or wedged in the graffitied rafters, alongside beautiful messages of appreciation and art from past BRC citizens. You may even find a serene chill space with a giant hammock and big fluffy pillows for some "me" time! Terra piggybacks Chip creating another snuggly hideout, enveloped in fur, for escaping the harsh elements and meeting new fuzzy friends.

🏠 Kinnelon, NJ, United States

Occupying a 15 sq ft footprint on the playa, Can Not Unsee extracts 77.9 ft³ of matter into a sparse geometric formation of minimalist poles. The installation invites participants to observe shifting perspectives, light, and spatial relationships from every angle.

🏠 San Francisco, CA, United States

A 14-foot-wide LED sign on the deep playa. Five lines of light, each reading "CAN YOU READ MY LIPS?", flicker across its face. First slow and tentative, then chaotic and overwhelming, like the fatigue of trying to keep up with many voices at once. At the peak the whole sign holds bright for one second, then resolves into a sixth line: "CAN YOU READ MY HANDS?" The piece is by a Deaf artist whose first language is American Sign Language. The lipreading the question asks for is the lipreading he does every day; the hands at the end point to a fuller language than mouths alone can carry, and a quieter question about whether better is possible.

🏠 Berkeley, CA, United States

Canis Minor, the Lesser Dog, the dog that goes before. A shiny dog's head sparkling day and night. Dedicated to all the small dogs with big personalities who left us too soon. They wait in the sky to guide us onward.

🏠 Seattle, WA, United States

Cardinal Gates explores the passage of time and how life is made up of fleeting, ever-changing moments. Our piece honors the cardinal directions and the sundials before them that have guided explorers for thousands of years. We are all explorers finding our way. The gates are a pop of saturated color in the playa landscape. Up close, during the day, they create a moving story of shadows capturing time. The flags are custom-dyed in vibrant colors inspired by the sky, representing our personal mythology of the directions. You can find your way following each of the four cardinal directions - North, East, South, or West. The flags & benches are made out of upcycled, reprinted convention banner fabrics and metal poles.

🏠 Las Vegas, NV, United States

This artwork reimagines Carnac's impulse to inscribe meaning into landscape through repetition and alignment. Like Carnac, which communicates through rhythm, spacing, and silent presence, these 1,000 forms create a field where individuality and collectivity merge. Each sculpture is humble, yet together they form a vast geometry understood through movement. This work embodies the tension between the singular and the collective, mirroring Black Rock City's community. Each piece stands alone, yet only through their thousand-fold repetition does the full vision emerge—a contemporary megalith born from humble multiplicity.

🏠 San Francisco, CA & Beirut, Lebanon

Cellubrate reminds you that you used to be a sperm. The spermatozoon is an unmistakable symbol of fertility, but also a reminder of our origins. Nearly every nonbacterial species has a flagellated gamete phase – including you! This wooden monument celebrates the grand trajectory of life, where all our ancestry unites back to a single universal cell. A single sperm embarks on a futile quest; only with joy can we – misfit drifters – find abundance amidst today's dismal environs. The rising sperm is a beacon for the lost, a poetic lesson about evolution, and a platform for you to proclaim your merriment. Messy jokes encouraged. Hopefully, your Impossible Dream will find its fertile goal before it burns out at the end of the week.

🏠 Prosser, WA, United States

The Center of the Universe is a 36" diameter metal art piece that looks like a manhole cover. It is designed for participants to stand on the art and take a picture of their feet and the art piece. There is a 26 foot arrow set at an angle and pointing to the Center of the Universe. During the day the arrow can be seen from a distance as it is painted green. At night the arrow is lit with green plasma LED string lights (the same as "The Question" in 2025).

🏠 St. George, UT, United States

A unique gathering place for any and all persons to perform or participate in celebrations affirming commitment. It is a 27 foot tall steel frame structure covered in white nylon. It takes its inspiration from the tide pool mollusk of the same name.

🏠 Santa Rosa, CA, United States

Clank is a kinetic geared sculpture that explores mechanical movement, sound, and whimsy.

🏠 Oakland, CA, United States

The Cocoon is a crocheted shelter that serves as a safe space for rest, reflection, and wonder. Before a caterpillar turns into a butterfly, it must spin a fibrous cocoon and take time to rebuild strength before transformation can occur. Humans as well must incorporate periods of rest before taking flight into the world with strength and renewed purpose. To enter the cocoon, one must get down on the ground and crawl in, symbolizing the humility involved in self reflection and hitting bottom before rising to the top. At the top is a silk flag symbolizing movement and flight. Inside the cocoon are carpet, pillows, and blankets for comfort during a moment of rest. Even with delicate stitching, we can build strength through structure.

🏠 Truckee, CA, United States

Coming Home is an immersive art installation celebrating the extraordinary journey people take from around the world to gather in Black Rock City. A sweeping wooden archway is covered with colorful directional signs representing cities and countries across the globe, each showing the distance traveled to reach the playa. At the center, a compass bearing the Burning Man symbol marks the shared destination that draws us all together. As visitors walk beneath the arch, they see places both familiar and distant, reminding us that while we come from every direction, we are united through creativity, connection, and community. In that moment, we realize something beautiful: we didn't just arrive at Burning Man… we came home.

🏠 Carson City, NV, United States

An art nouveau altar-shaped circus wagon containing three confessional booths and a reflection area intended to provide a space for vulnerability, connection, and self-reconciliation outside of any authority structures. Confessors are given the option to speak directly or anonymously through an AI proxy which rephrases (for instance as a pirate or in haiku) and inevitably distorts communication, raising the question of how much is gained and lost in digital encounters. The absurdity or frustration of the AI may drive them to drop the veil of the artificial for a heart-to-heart connection or they may find joy in the play of a pirate haiku telephone game of soul searching in an ornate circus wagon in the middle of a desert.

🏠 San Francisco, CA, United States

Correfoc is a freestanding sculptural installation approximately 26 feet tall, conceived as a stylized human silhouette inspired by Mediterranean fire rituals. Built in wood and finished in a vibrant red tone, the piece stands as a striking landmark in the desert landscape. At night, subtle lighting enhances its silhouette and amplifies the presence of surrounding fire performances. The work explores the human silhouette as an ancestral symbol, where fire, ritual, and collective movement converge into a shared, ephemeral presence. Correfoc is envisioned as a daily gathering point for the fire dancers of Burning Man. During a special event, a traditional fire dance will unfold around the sculpture prior to its burning, linking Mediterranean traditions with the transformative culture of Burning Man.

🏠 Valencia, Spain

The CosmicKorQ transcends mere wood and bolts; it represents that fleeting second when a participant leaves the ground and gravity ceases to matter. Built with a deliberate cosmic glow, the installation serves as a defiance of the limits that hold an individual back. It embodies the grit required to fall and the resilient spirit necessary to rise again. Whether someone is a skater or a participant, the ramp offers a space where physical boundaries blur. Every shred breaks the status quo, transforming a simple movement into a personal victory. Within this wooden arena, the participant does not merely move; they transcend. The piece stands as a testament to human persistence, proving that the act of rising is just as vital as the ride itself.

🏠 San Francisco, CA

Crystal Sanctum symbolizes resilience, transformation, and inner strength. Formed under immense pressure over time, it reflects the human experience of growth through adversity—how challenges shape us into stronger, more multifaceted versions of ourselves. Its many facets represent the complexities of life: struggle and triumph, fragility and endurance, darkness and illumination. Though light passes through and refracts across its surfaces, the diamond itself remains unbroken, embodying the enduring strength of the human spirit. Within the vastness and harshness of the desert, the diamond becomes a sanctuary of reflection and presence. It reminds us that beauty and wisdom can emerge through pressure, and that even in difficult conditions, the human spirit has the capacity to remain luminous, grounded, and whole.

🏠 Miranda, CA

What's your trauma you need to turn into ART? That's what this is. It's dedicated to loss and the era of (the incompetent) DARE. We take it and ask, Does Art Reside Everywhere? In everything? What does it look like? For this piece the artist wanted to show that you can take the hurt and make it large, and possibly disturbing, ART. Having lost a sibling to heroin overdose this is a tribute to them.

🏠 Honolulu, HI

This captivating sculpture embodies the form of a large multifaceted diamond, artfully shaped into a heart. Each facet is meticulously crafted to capture and reflect light, creating a dynamic interplay of reflections that evolve with the viewer's perspective. Scaled up to impressive size, the sculpture invites viewers to see themselves within its gleaming surfaces encouraging introspection and connection. It stands as a powerful reminder to love oneself and others.

🏠 East Palo Alto, CA, United States

Disco Mushroom is a merry-go-round sculpture built from recycled wooden spools and wrapped in more than 100,000 mirrored disco tiles that shimmer and scatter light in every direction. A red polka-dot canopy blooms overhead, creating a shaded space with seating beneath it. By day, thousands of tiny mirrors reflect the sky, dust, and passing faces in sparkling fragments. By night, color-shifting lights transform it into a glowing, spinning constellation. Disco Mushroom celebrates reflection, play, and the strange beauty of small moments shining together.

🏠 Alpine Meadows, CA, United States

Seven Vietnamese basket boats drift across a sea of lanterns on the ancient seabed of the Black Rock Desert. Back when fishermen wove bamboo into vessels, the boats float between what they were and what they're becoming. The lanterns draw from longheld Asian traditions where light holds space for what we cannot yet reach. Together, boats and lanterns hold both sides of being lost: what we're letting go of and what hasn't taken shape yet. A dock marks the shore with a bustling soundscape and a trilingual poem. Beyond, caustic light ripples like shallow water. The lanterns thicken, the sound softens, the shore fades. At the far edge, a single boat and a single lantern sit in near silence. The crossing doesn't resolve. It holds.

🏠 Oakland, CA, United States

An enlarged paper airplane and paper boat made out of wood stand as symbols of courage and trust. The airplane represents our deepest dreams — the ones we often keep hidden inside our hearts. It reminds us that dreams are not meant to stay folded. They are meant to be released into open space and given the chance to rise. The paper boat represents faith and surrender the willingness to let life carry our dreams forward, to trust the current even when we cannot see the destination. Together, they invite people to free their dreams to the planet — to give them air and flow, movement and possibility. Follow your dreams. Do not bury them. Let them fly and let them flow

🏠 San Jose, CA, United States

The Dreamweaver Labyrinth Project is a classical seven-circuit Cretan labyrinth on the playa. Four-foot-wide paths spiral inward to a sixteen-foot open center, all ground-level. Solid blue LED rope lights the way at night, powered off-grid by solar panels, batteries, and low-voltage wiring—dust-proof and wind-anchored. Participants enter freely, walk the meditative turns, pause in the center for reflection or sharing. It welcomes everyone: wheelchair-accessible, multilingual signs, no barriers. Built for wonder amid chaos—proof that quiet space exists even here.

🏠 Portland, OR, United States

Duende is drawn from Spanish folklore which refers to the mysterious force that evokes awe and emotional intensity. Duende represents that sudden joy of recognition, the moment when authentic beauty becomes suddenly apparent; the spark of wonder that cannot be manufactured or denied. Valerie Mallory has been exhibiting work at Burning Man for 10 years and has been participating at Burning Man as a volunteer for 20 years

🏠 Oakland, CA, United States

A mirage of civilization, half-remembered and half-imagined. Out in deep playa, where nothing stands and everything is possible, a Roman-inspired piazza appears. At the corner, the façade of an ancient palazzo meets the Dusty Trattoria, returning after its debut at Burning Man 2025. The first thing you notice is the ground beneath your feet: cobblestone. Someone paved the playa… and suddenly the mirage feels real. Not a monument to power, but a monument to life.

🏠 Oakland, CA, United States

Dusty Heart is a stainless steel sculpture shaped like a massive tumbleweed, its woven metal branches forming a sphere that cradles a glowing fire at its core. Nearby, a small covered wagon filled with firewood and an elevated fire pit create a scene reminiscent of a nomadic desert encampment. The polished steel reflects the flickering flames, while the sculpture's organic, wind-tossed form captures the energy of motion and transformation. Together, the elements evoke warmth, impermanence, and the timeless rhythm between humanity, nature, and fire.

🏠 Santa Fe, NM, United States

It is a metal representation of the Eiffel Tower, similar to the one created for the 1900 World's Fair in Paris, at a 1:10 scale. This version will be cut in two, as if it had crashed into the desert after a chaotic journey: • The lower section, with its four legs planted in the ground, symbolizes the sinking of a lost civilization, • While the top of the tower, pointing toward the sky, offers hope for a brighter future. A cable will be stretched between the two peaks so that a tightrope walker can cross from one end to the other.

🏠 La Gaubretière, France

On the first Monday of the event, Crimson Rose extracts a flame from the sun to light a fire in El Diabla, a special cauldron located in Center Camp. For the flame to continue burning it must be stoked, disturbed, and kept alive throughout the entire week. We encourage all those that encounter El Diabla to help keep this flame alive.

🏠 Seattle, WA and Reno, NV

The Electric Dandelion is a 24 ft. tall dandelion sculpture that doubles as fireworks at night. The dandelion bulb comes to life at night as the LED animations take hold and mesmerize you with their bright and intense light show. Sit down and enjoy the lights or dance and see the beautiful geometrically designed metal and acrylic sculpture.

🏠 Long Beach, CA, United States

We try to imitate and follow this sacred flow of natural rhythm, and work with the environment, looking for forms that will combine together without the need for too much human intervention. Nothing is needed except cleaning, and ensuring the balanced connection between the pieces, with screws that give the structure durability, and prolong the magical life of a creature like this. Working intuitively, and using all imaginable perspectives, without disturbing the obvious form that defines the dragon, we always offer the observer the opportunity to go further in the dimension of imagination, adding their creativity to the fractal, which we are able to co-create. We invite you to the incredible sensory experience of meeting a dragon in person.

🏠 Brasov, Romania

Direct from the blessed soil of Elysara comes a single, displaced specimen of the Caudex mnemosyne. Unlike the "killer plants" of sci-fi tropes or the death-worlds Burners are familiar with, this Pachycaul-like organism is not a predator—it is a scavenger. Enlightenment is a biological curiosity that harvests the one thing humans possess in toxic excess: unwanted memories. It survives by metabolizing your regrets and the heavy weight of the past. Some specimens have learned how to communicate. The flower is around six feet in diameter and has attractive lights to lure entities in range. Like Terran plants which provide fruit and shelter - Enlightenment provides shelter, light, and a place to rest while it feeds on your unwanted baggage.

🏠 Houston, TX, United States

A monument to collective motion, EPOD is a rotating steel landscape powered by the most renewable energy source on Earth: people who refuse to sit still. It turns restlessness into art. Capacity: 80 humans. Runtime: indefinite.

🏠 Bay Area, CA, United States

Delving into the neuroscience of biophotons. The work is an artistic interpretation of the interactive communication of light energy between two opposite forces. It also philosophically shows how starting from the same raw light/energy, endless variations are hidden within.

🏠 Mountain Lakes, NJ, United States

face2face is as simple as could be. A chair for "you" and a chair for "your new friend". You sit and who will appear to sit with you? Will the conversation flow? Will it be exciting, awkward-or maybe even playa magical? You'll never know unless you sit.

🏠 Burbank, CA, United States

"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. He to whom the emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand wrapped in awe, is as good as dead; his eyes are closed." - Albert Einstein

🏠 Pacifica, CA, United States

Fire Circle honors the birthplace of congregation. From dusk until dawn, a sacred fire will provide a haven for warmth, intimate gatherings, and restorative programming.

🏠 Bozeman, MT, United States

The Fire Gnome Collective is thrilled to bring this 30-foot timber and steel installation to Black Rock City. We are ready to build a space for the community to play and explore on the playa. We can't wait to share the Fire Gnome's communal burn and the secrets revealed!

🏠 Northampton, MA, Emeryville, CA, Los Angeles, CA, & Seattle, WA

The horse will be in the steam punk architectural style with gears, gadgets, knobs, bells and whistles. 12 feet tall and standing strong.

🏠 Ibiza, Spain

Hundreds of independent electronic fireflies flash together, coordinated only by the same simple mechanism that real biological fireflies use to synchronize their light, each one designed by a different teenager from a different location across the globe.

🏠 Burlington, VT, United States

A steel caduceus rises from the Playa, a sword entwined with twin serpents and crowned with the wings of Hermes and an all-seeing eye. Forged from stainless steel, brass, and mild steel, it bends and scatters desert light, appearing watchful and alive in the dust. The serpents coil through ancient dualities of creation and destruction, obedience and rebellion, and cycles carried through tradition and rarely questioned. The sword forms an axis of power, both guardian and threat. Above, Hermes' wings speak of transcendence and ascent, while the mirrored eye returns fractured reflections of the viewer, reminding us that perception is always partial, and truth remains just beyond our grasp.

🏠 Martinsville, Australia

Fractured Light is an attempt at balance. There are two circles of pillars. The outer circle has eight points, like the eight pointed star revered in most cultures throughout history. Each pillar has designs cut into it so colorful light can come out and create fantastic designs all around. In the center stands a white pillar, representing the culmination of all the shapes and colors, coming together to form white light, or balance.

🏠 Empire, CO, United States

Freedom Dancers is a circle of seven monumental, tree-like human figures rising approximately 10–13 feet tall from the desert floor. Constructed from steel armatures with textured papercrete surfaces, the sculptures combine the human form with branching limbs and open negative space that allows light and shadow to move through the work. Each figure represents a stage in the transformation of grief into compassion. Arranged in a circle, the dancers create a quiet visual dialogue about resilience, healing, and the shared emotional experiences that connect humanity.

🏠 Seaside, CA, United States

An broken wooden bridge rises from the playa and stops in open air, as if the rest has slipped into another world. By day, cut patterns in the deck cast drifting shadows of water and fish onto the dust below, moving with the sun and changing with each passing body overhead. By night, a river of light appears beneath the span, where ghost desert salmon glide through a current that is not there. At the broken end, distant beams carry the bridge into darkness, suggesting a passage completed not by structure, but by imagination, memory, and the shared dream of a place that briefly becomes real.

🏠 Yekaterinburg & Moscow, Russia

Giraffe in Motion is a life-size LED push puppet that comes to life (powered by YOU)!

🏠 New York, NY, United States

God Is in Your Spine features a single 3D anatomical spine (~34") rising from a squared three-step plywood podium. The participant sits with their back to the spine, and breath triggers LEDs that climb the vertebrae, tracing the ascent of inner energy. By day, the spine presents a striking sculptural form; by night, its glow creates a luminous, meditative field. Rooted in Kriya Yoga, the piece embodies the spine as the body's axis, connecting inner awareness to the cosmos, and weaves individual presence into a reflective, collective resonance across the playa.

🏠 Portland, OR, United States

Hahalua is a 24' manta ray, hanging overhead, whose wings are made to flap when visitors swing on a wide porch swing below. The bottom of Hahalua is covered with 25,000 LEDs, which display patterns choreographed to classical music and classic rock.

🏠 Oakland, CA, United States

Harmonic Orbiter transforms the simple act of tilting into a playful experiment in collective motion, where strangers discover harmony through shared balance and movement. Small actions build momentum, creating moments of synchronicity and connection.

🏠 Cambridge, MA; Toronto, Ontario & Squamish, BC, Canada

"Head Maze Tickets...!" is a box attached to a post of the Burning Man trash fence. It distributes "tickets" to Head Maze. A visitor can open the box and take a ticket. Head Maze was at Burning Man in 2019. There were often long lines to enter it, so there were rumors about tickets on the trash fence that let ticket holders skip the line. There were no tickets in 2019, but there are Head Maze tickets at Burning Man in 2026...! Enjoy...!

🏠 Oakland, CA, United States

Headwaters is inspired by the spiritual symbolism of Mount Kailash, long regarded as the Axis Mundi. The installation draws from this idea of a central source, with gradually rising bamboo poles creating a landscape of ascension and carving out a journey defined by detours, uncertainty, and gradual revelation. The work explores themes of origin, convergence, and inner alignment, offering a space for reflection, manifestation, and meeting oneself in a moment of stillness.

🏠 Wellington, New Zealand & Denver, Colorado

Heart of Intentions is a place to gather, reflect, and connect. Its large wooden heart design quietly invites pause and contemplation. Visitors are encouraged to consider a hope or intention they wish to bring into the world. That intention is written on a small charm (provided) and placed upon the heart, joining a growing constellation of shared wishes. In return, a charm left by another is chosen and carried away, completed with the materials provided and worn as a small piece of jewelry. Each exchange sends a stranger's hope back out into the world. Over time, the heart fills with these offerings, becoming a living reminder that unseen threads connect us all, and that even the smallest act of care can ripple far beyond a single moment.

🏠 Alameda, CA & Emeryville, CA

Heart Remains is a monumental light sculpture rising from the open desert. A suspended heart form is held within rib-like structures that appear both protective and exposed. Subtle movement and shifting light give the piece a quiet sense of breath and presence. At night, illumination reveals the delicate inner geometry of the structure. The work reflects the need for emotional boundaries that people create to remain true to themselves while staying soft at their core. Balancing strength and vulnerability, Heart Remains explores how protection can exist without hardness, and how the heart can remain open while still honoring its soft nature.

🏠 Miami, FL & Istanbul, Turkey

This Installation looks like a very cozy and inviting little Heart Home, it may draw your curiosity as you see the lights shining on the inside as you peer through one of the openings, it might remind you that we all have a heart and each one is special. To me it reminds me that home is where the heart is, and you always have your heart.

🏠 Jackson, MO, United States

Here Between There is an interactive installation exploring human connection in the absence of digital signal. Two steel hearts define the space: one wrapped in obsolete cords, dense and tangled, reflecting how technology connects yet can also entangle and distance; the other open, gradually woven with ribbons over time. The ribbons extend connection outward, linking participants through shared gesture and presence. A metal message board bears the cut-out words "Leave a Trace Here / To Be Found," its surface marked and erased daily in chalk. Drawing from pre-digital message boards once used by travelers, the work forms a quiet center between here and there, where connection shifts from mediated signal to shared presence.

🏠 Bryn Mawr, PA & Park City, UT

They chose courage. We carry the memory. This art object commemorates those who left civilian life to defend the freedom of Ukraine and its people. It embodies a warrior-defender, originally developed by 3D artist Zakhar Zakharov based on a concept by Thomas Wievegg. In 2022, Zakhar left to defend his homeland and did not return. The installation manifests a futuristic guardian in blue and yellow, symbolizing courage, memory, and resilience. The figure stands on an illuminated octagonal base resembling tree roots, expressing connection to family, community, and homeland. Together, they form an axis mundi—an enduring structure that carries forward memory and the human spirit.

🏠 Kharkiv, Ukraine | Rotterdam, Netherlands | San Francisco, CA

Honey, is a Positivity Watchdog, spreading good energy, warmth, and joy wherever she goes. The watch on her collar is set to 11:11 because she is all about celebrating oneness, and making wishes come true. The circular motifs on her body represent our journey within the circles of life, and each piece is chosen to reflect the beauty of the world around us. The circles are designed with gemstones, geodes and various rocks representing mother nature's gifts from the past, today and future. Thousands of hand cut, gold-colored mirrors are strategically applied which create a beautiful light that constantly shifts in color and reflections throughout the day. So let's embrace positivity and manifest good things together!

🏠 Wilson, NC & Escondido, CA

HOPE is a metal lotus flower rising from the desert dust. It rises as a luminous point of orientation - a reminder to turn inward, to breathe, and to rediscover what truly matters. In a world full of noise, this art invites stillness and reflection, guiding us toward our inner divine, where peace and resilience live. Symbolizing awakening and rebirth, it offers a sacred space for meditation at sunrise and reflection at sunset - a place of peace, unity, and shared human connection and connection between sky, earth, and the unseen. HOPE celebrates the beauty and the power of the collaboration. Created by many hands and minds from different countries, it expresses the infinite potential that blooms when we connect with ourselves, each other, and the universe.

🏠 Ljubljana, Slovenia

Inspired by succulents in the arid desert, Hortus Lux is a restful oasis by day and an invitation to play by night. Each of the five woven hammock leaves accommodates two. Seated burners listen to guided meditations synced to light and haptic vibrations.

🏠 Los Angeles, CA, United States

Two burners from different sides of the country met on playa and discussed their childhoods. While so much was different, adorably similar memories shined through. "Remember those beaded lizards?" "My mom still has all of mine!" "I gave all mine away." How We Were Raised is a conversation inspired by a childhood craft and what we might choose to do with something we create. Were you raised to cherish your efforts? Or to gift to those around you? The adults that we become are so influenced by those who are around us when we're young, and then we are the adults. How do we learn how to gift to those in our community? Or outside of it? Would you teach your children the same as you were taught?

🏠 Lodi, CA, United States

A magical spinner stands aside a record-keeping console that graphically tracks the 6 line results of traditional I Ching practice. The I Ching O-Matic has 64 wooden tablets that provide extraordinary details about any type of question asked. The oracle fosters experiences of deep relevance that tend to become valuable gifts long after the burn. Divination techniques done in a public burner setting allow for deep spirit messages to be shared with friends. Witnessing divination synchronicity in action generates trust and inspiration in the process. The results can touch people directly and tend to activate future off-playa transformations.

🏠 Oakland, CA, United States

Several lamps sprout from the ground, looking for light they cannot give themselves.

🏠 San Diego, CA, United States

A larger than life lounging lizard jam packed with musical elements. Remniscent of childhood toys, this iguana brings out the inner child in burners of all ages.

🏠 Portland, OR, United States

Illumicone is light art driven by participation and interaction. A softly glowing presence draws participants inside, where they encounter strange mechanical widgets. As they play with the widgets, patterns of light move in response, surrounding the participants with a dazzling spectacle of color of their own creation. Illumicone is 19 feet tall at its center and 38 feet across at its base. Cables descending from the top of the cone carry 4800 individually controlled LEDs. Inside the cone are interactive, mechanical widgets. Participants manipulate the widgets, causing patterns of light to dance across the LEDs. Some widgets drive colored lines and rings, while others create sparkles or showers of color droplets.

🏠 Boise, ID, United States

Born from Sally Guzman's personal journey through loss in 2025, In This Moment transforms the isolation of grief into a communal act of remembrance. Inspired by the myth of the forest witch who offers to simply listen. Sally has created a physical threshold for the weary. It is a place built for the "us" and the "now"—a sanctuary where telling a story makes the lost present once more. Sit, tell me about them. Will it bring them back? It will, for us, in this moment

🏠 Reno, NV, United States

Inheritance is a solitary Appalachian pie safe cabinet standing in the desert. Traditionally used to store food behind ventilated tin panels, the cabinet is reimagined here as a keeper of quieter knowledge. Inside are jars of herbs, persimmon seeds used for winter prediction, handwritten remedies, and other fragments of Appalachian domestic life. When the doors open, the back of the cabinet reveals a glass mountain sunset, transporting participants unexpectedly from the playa into the Appalachian landscape. The work reflects a tradition where practical knowledge of land, weather, and healing was carried quietly by women and passed through generations as lived inheritance. Visitors are invited to open the cabinet and discover what remains.

🏠 Asheville, NC & Townsend, TN

The Iron Butterfly of Love rises from the playa as a radiant guardian of the night. With brilliant LED wings stretching across the darkness, he shines brightly so that wanderers, dreamers, and dancers can always find their way. His light is a beacon — a symbol of safety, connection, and wonder in the vast desert. The Iron Butterfly communicates through sound, responding to music, voices, and the rhythm of the crowd. Every beat, every laugh, every song becomes part of his living conversation. The Butterfly reminds us that love, like music, transcends borders, cultures, and differences. Under his glowing wings, strangers become friends, and the universal language of sound brings hearts together.

🏠 Sacramento, CA, United States

It's a TRAP! is the biggest game of mouse trap jenga you will ever find!

🏠 Portland, OR, United States

Jeremiah is a seven-foot-tall frog, posed mid-leap as he catches his dinner. Outfitted with a leather saddle and bridle, he is ready to take you to whatever playa adventures the day might hold. Joining him are a variety of bugs - perhaps they are next on the menu? This sculpture, created by the same group that brought you a silly, orange tree-eating monster last year, was built purely for delight. We believe art doesn't always need to be serious. It doesn't always need to be a lesson or have a deeper meaning. Sometimes it's just a frog you can ride while it hunts bugs.

🏠 San Francisco, CA, United States

Just A Spoonful is not just any umbrella, it's a larger-than-life adaptation of Mary Poppins' enchanted umbrella. Both a nostalgic tribute to this classic childhood character and homage to New Orleans culture, where umbrellas are often used as celebratory accessories in second lines. Mary Poppins has just floated in from a New Orleans parade, landing in Black Rock City, abandoning her umbrella to take in playa delights. We are offering Black Rock City a nostalgic warm hug from our beloved nanny.

🏠 New Orleans, LA, United States

Two strangers sitting on chairs and admiring the sunrise. A moment to rest and enjoy the simple things in life. A piece that invites to explore in the tiny detail or just to do nothing at all. Of course the playa always provides, maybe in a dream, maybe as the long-expected answer to a question, maybe in a conversation with another Burner.

🏠 Diest, Belgium & Bocas Del Toro, Panama

A different take on the world tree, as a triangular kaleidoscopic tunnel standing 9' 8" tall and 36' 4" long. The organic design of the entrance represents the roots of the Cosmic Tree, our past and our connection to the natural world. The kaleidoscopic tunnel is the trunk of the tree. The interior and exterior of the piece will be covered in highly reflective aluminum sheets. During the day the sunlight shines through giving a stained glass effect that will reflect colors across the inside. In contrast to the organic entrance the opposite end is covered in video monitors, with bundles of wires wrapping all around, representing our collective future.

🏠 Liberty, NY

Hundreds of fused-glass monarch butterflies cascade in a brilliant murmuration, forming an archway of shifting light. By day, the sun catches the glass and projects colorful shadows. By night, each individually lit butterfly takes part in a prismatic dance. The piece meditates on inheritance and stewardship, mirroring the monarch's transgenerational migration. They traverse North America, naturally transcending political borders, relying on subsequent generations to complete a journey no single individual can finish. Kaleidoscope, also the name for a swarm of butterflies, honors this lineage of care, illustrating how human continuity depends on mutual reliance and the collective wisdom passed to those who follow.

🏠 Nevada City & San Francisco, CA

Keyhole to Other Dimensions is a freestanding wooden installation inspired by Dill's illustration project Trip Number and more than a decade of photographing Burning Man. Rising about ten feet tall, the sculpture reads as a keyhole from the front and back and a key-like form from the sides. Layered wood ribs, shelves, and hidden compartments create depth throughout the structure. Photographs from the playa and illustrated imagery appear across its surfaces and interior spaces. Benches at the base offer a place to pause and look outward across the playa, while openings and interior spaces invite closer looking and discovery. At night, low amber light beneath the benches and subtle uplighting from the ground reveal the structure's depth.

🏠 San Francisco, CA, United States

Lacunae II rises as two luminous stainless steel screens composed of over 2,000 hand-sanded tubes that gather, reflect, and release desert light. Openings within the structure create shifting fields of presence and absence as the forms move from a dense, ordered base into a more airy, dissolving upper reach. Set perpendicular on a shared base, the screens mark time like a sundial, casting slow, migrating shadows across the playa. At night, solar light awakens the surfaces. The title Lacunae, meaning gaps or missing spaces, reflects both the voids within the work and the human presence that completes it, bridging earth and sky.

🏠 Windsor, CA

LAMP draws visitors in with mesmerizing shadow patterns dancing across triangular shade sails. Inside, a cozy nest of pillows and rugs awaits beneath a canopy of shimmering LED pebble lights. Hidden buttons scattered throughout the space trigger synchronized light and sound experiences—deep bass vibrates through the platform while color washes across the sails above. The installation rewards curiosity and collaboration, as certain button combinations unlock different shows. LAMP is an acronym, but its meaning is open to interpretation. Two of our favorites: Love All My People and Light Amplifies Magical Possibilities.

🏠 San Diego, CA, United States

The Ballerina is part of the Let it Go series, and is meant to inspire people to let go of what does not serve any longer in order to grow. Life is not about finding yourself, but recreating yourself. At night, the Ballerina will be surrounded by solar firefly lights portraying dancing in a twinkle garden in the middle of the playa. The heart LED colors mimics fire & serves as a focal point for wandering souls on the playa at night.

🏠 Miami, FL & New York, NY

Limen is a sculptural installation composed of three vertically oriented steel forms and a surrounding field of seating elements. Each structure is built from layered sheet metal, combining an outer patterned skin with a darker perforated interior to produce shifting effects of surface, depth, and shadow. By day, the painted metal registers changing light conditions; by night, internal moving illumination projects patterns into the surrounding space. The work draws on visual languages associated with circuitry, topography, camouflage, wood grain, and abstracted maze structures, positioning them within a hybrid techno-organic vocabulary shaped by uncertainty, adaptation, and emergence.

🏠 Penngrove, CA, United States

Lookout! is a 48-foot-tall fire lookout tower absurdly disguised as a gigantic fire extinguisher. Rising from the deep playa, Lookout! asks participants to reexamine their role as environmental stewards and to reflect on fire, landscape, and the smoldering state of our world(s) ablaze.

🏠 Portland OR, Oakland CA, & Reno NV

A table and some chairs. Birds. A telephone. Do the birds talk? Does the phone work? Wait, is that a map painted on the table..?

🏠 Tacoma, WA, United States

An interactive sculpture that lets you experience how the energy of love and human consciousness are deeply intertwined with nature through one of the world's most environmentally important and diverse ecosystems — the mangrove forest. The tree's roots come to life, illuminated by hidden LEDs that trace the textures and forms of the roots, branches, and leaves. A 20-minute sound composition is synchronized with the light, unfolding as a subtle, harmonious narrative within the sculpture. At the center, two human forms, intertwined with the roots, symbolize the inseparable bond between humanity and nature.

🏠 Mexico City, Mexico

Mebuyan Pulse is a floating constellation of spheres—part sanctuary, part beacon—hovering above the playa with pathways that thread through its clustered forms. A luminous ground sphere anchors the work at night, releasing patterned light and a slow "pulse" of sound and spoken word at set times, drawing people into a shared moment before the structure returns to quiet. The piece speaks to themes of migration, belonging, and the vulnerable space in between endings and beginnings. Inspired by the mythological Filipino goddess Mebuyan and by Leeroy New's Aliens of Manila artistic series, it offers a place to pause, gather, and feel whole.

🏠 New York, NY and Manila, Philippines

Mini-infinipus is a stylistic rendition of an octopus - by day it will mimic the surroundings with its mirrors and aluminum frame, and by night will draw participants in with its adaptive and controllable color-changing arms.

🏠 Sacramento, CA, United States

Mona Moon explores emotional softness within extreme environments. The art piece is inspired in part by the ancient Chinese romantic yet tragic story of Chang'e and the Jade Bunny: Chang'e and her lover are separated when she is forced to drink an elixir of immortality and ascends to the moon. Only once a year the two lovers are able to see each other. In Chinese culture, when two lovers or family members are far away from each other, they will often look at the moon together in longing, and hopeful emotional connectedness. The purple Mona Bunny represents companionship, sensitivity, and the need for warmth and connection during moments of longing. The Mona Moon Marriage March will invite you to vow or renew your vows with your soulmate.

🏠 Berkeley, CA & Chengdu, China

This statue captures the tension between Western trinity and Eastern duality. Three arms represent facets of human striving: will (weapon), understanding (knowledge), and exploration (lantern). These are expressions of the self shaping reality through action, thought, and intuition. Yet the two legs ground the figure in duality — yin and yang, light and shadow, life and death. The insect-like form hints at a post-human archetype, a being not choosing between opposites but holding them both at once. It invites reflection on the paradox of unity through contradiction.

🏠 Noginsk, Russia

This sculpture captures the eternal bond between mother and child, celebrating the strength, tenderness, and unwavering support of motherhood. It stands as a monument to the foundational role of care in our society. Everything begins inside.

🏠 Ivano-Ftankivsk. Ukrainian

Immerse yourself in a world of colorful boomwhackers (tubes that make a sound when struck!). Wander through the maze of boomwhackers to discover what sounds you can make or songs you can play. Bring a friend or play alone. Grab a mallet or, the artists have found that using your head as a mallet is sometimes superior. Grab a prompt card for some inspiration and see if you can play the hidden song -- it's a Burning Man favorite.

🏠 Seattle, WA, United States

Nang Du: The Nanganing (a trailer trash epic) suspends six vintage camper trailers from a towering mast, counterbalanced by an opulent chandelier made of welded junk cars. Each trailer opens to reveal illuminated dioramas of burner folklore, desert conspiracies, and other half-truth playa stories. Built almost entirely from reclaimed materials sourced from Burning Man and Gerlach waste streams, the sculpture considers second chances and the strange beauty that emerges when discarded things, objects, stories, and sometimes people can still be transformed into something unexpectedly beautiful.

🏠 Gerlach, NV, United States

Napahe Tunade is Paiute for Six Fires, which line the 6:00 keyhole and compliment El Diabla, the ritual fire of Burning Man, and the fire garden and Fire Conclave Convergence. Come and dance with the fire, perhaps roast a marshmallow or be mesmerized by the dancing flames or feel the calm from the flaming zen garden.

🏠 Reno, NV, United States

The purpose of this work is to showcase the beauty of coexistence between humans and nature, presenting the most authentic human form in the form of nudity, and conveying the most primitive beauty on this planet.

🏠 Ningbo, China

A large sculptural installation spelling the word "NO" in bold block letters filled with pastel faux flowers. The soft, abundant blooms contrast with the firmness of the word, creating a visual tension between beauty and refusal. The piece reflects the common experience of women softening boundaries in order to remain safe or socially acceptable. By pairing delicate floral imagery with an unmistakable statement of refusal, the installation reveals how gentleness and strength coexist. The work makes visible the emotional labor of softening truth and transforms a familiar survival habit into a visible, luminous form that acknowledges both the grace and the cost of learning to say no.

🏠 Sacramento, CA, Chicago, IL, and Los Angeles, CA

No Race is an inverted three-tier podium constructed from reclaimed wooden pallets, installed directly on the open playa. The familiar structure of first-, second-, and third-place is flipped upside down, collapsing its hierarchy. The widest platform rests above a compressed base, creating a visually destabilized form. "NO RACE" appears in bold, hand-painted lettering across the front. The piece transforms a symbol of competition into a reflection on shared ground, questioning systems of ranking, speed, and social division.

🏠 Sunnyvale, CA, United States

Welcome to the realm of the Notorious BSW... part sculpture, part mirage, part sacred joke that somehow became legend. Rising from the dust, these monumental spinning forms offer something rare out on the playa... a place to pause, stare, drift, and lose yourself in something larger than explanation. In a city built on spectacle, rumor, mischief and absurdity, they stand apart... mesmerizing in motion, majestic in scale, and charged with the kind of presence that makes people go quiet before inventing their own mythology. Are they meditative? Definitely. Are they magical? Feels that way. Are they notorious? You must be new here. Nobody fully agrees on what they are... but certainty was never the point. Patience is a virtue PDA

🏠 Roxbury, NY, United States

Nova is a stellated dodecahedron slowly spinning on a wood platform. It was named after the exploding star. As the star throws off its matter, this art piece represents ideas generated during the creative process. Some will be lost to the ether but others coalesce into reality.

🏠 Folsom, CA, United States

Octopolis is a mother octopus. She is a celebration of life! As she guards her festoons, she invites you to see art in different dimensions: as a striking visual experience, as a metaphor for resilience & renewal, and as a tangible force that continues to shape the world long after the festival lights fade. Initially showcased as interactive art in the desert, she will later transition into an underwater sanctuary, fostering coral growth and sheltering marine life displaced by habitat destruction. She is a reminder that creativity can ripple outward- shifting perspectives, inspiring care, and restoring the delicate balance of our shared environment. Art with a mission, leaving a legacy of beauty, imagination, and ecological care!

🏠 Northern California & Springfield, IL

On High brings a mountaintop to the playa. A pulpit for the people. It provides an elevated place for expression open to everyone, something usually reserved for the few. Both a beautiful object and a blank canvas, it is a place for curious souls to unleash their hearts and minds, and to witness it all unfold. And to do it now, before it burns!

🏠 Blackstone, MA, United States

A sculptural installation emerges in the desert as a contemplative space exploring transformation, presence, and the passage of time. Abstracted human forms and layered surfaces create a visual language of vulnerability and resilience. The work reflects the emotional landscapes of solitude, reflection, and connection, echoing the idea of memento mori and the impermanence of life. Light, shadow, and texture shift throughout the day, revealing subtle details and changing perspectives. The installation symbolizes the human journey through uncertainty, memory, and renewal, transforming the desert landscape into a quiet moment of introspection and shared humanity.

🏠 El Paso, TX, United States

OptimeyeZ takes its name from the idea of optimizing one's experience at Burning Man. A pair of comically large, seven-inch googly eyes placed on a first timer's tent, capturing the playful absurdity of the playa, sparking inspiration to build them bigger. The installation reflects fleeting moments of joy—distant smiles, radiant lights, and unbridled bliss across Black Rock. Beneath its humor lies the enduring symbolism of the eye in art history, representing perception and awareness. The piece embodies core principles of the burn, especially radical inclusivity, expressing that all are seen, all are welcome, and all belong.

🏠 Indianapolis, IN, United States

A pop-up book, made of steel. A celebration of humans still finding new ways to bend and fold. In Babel, humans built so high that we threatened the divine. We were scattered into languages they couldn't share. We built the tower again. AI is made from everything we've said, every image, every sound. The universal translator, finally. In the absences of gods, we smite ourselves.

🏠 Escondido, CA, United States

Pandora's Eye is a temple of creation myth and the paradoxical nature of pandora's box. The temple is a decagon reciprocal timber frame and spiral oculus with traditional joinery. The walls are 200 year old salvaged rosewood panels from a buddhist temple in Thailand, repurposed with new life. Monumental original paintings line the walls, vivid depictions of creation mythologies, sacred animals, and lush natural forms. The work explores the divine feminine, the freedom of nature and the body, and the alchemical dance between spirit and matter. The Eye is the moment of emergence and awareness when the universe begins to see itself. It is also a call to change our attitude towards nature, the planet, and our bodies.

🏠 Wassaic, NY & Lords Valley, PA

Who is programming who between you and your device? Content contains conditioning and the sculpture programming shows glimpses of the subliminal behind the screen.

🏠 Wadsworth, NV, United States

A metallic tree rises from the desert, its tubular branches tracing perfect parabolic curves toward the heavens—each arc a mathematical prayer, each junction a meeting point between earth and cosmos. At its base, an immense mirror parabola spreads across the ground like a liquid portal, reflecting sky, stars, and every soul that approaches. Burners will adorn it with light reflectors, forming a canopy of light, reflections merging between branches and roots, dissolving the illusion of separation to better reveal a communication between earth and sky. By day, the mirrored surface captures clouds and sun; by night, it holds constellations and firelight.

🏠 Saint Denis, France

Party in a Box is a large-scale interactive structure where participants can choose their own [party] adventure. There are designated areas of the structure for participants to add onto or otherwise modify the piece, making it a constantly evolving work in progress. Just like you.

🏠 Portland, OR, United States

An exalted, shining, copper goose that seen from distance will draw observers to discover that this goose's feathers are made up from layered penny coins from Canada and the United States. This is the return of a much loved art installation from 2015 that is completely rebuilt with the concrete skin method we use with our penny bears. The penny feather pattern will give tribute to the better relationship Canada and the United States have long known. This is a return of a much loved art installation from 2015 but completely rebuilt with concrete as we have had with our penny bears. The feather pattern will be unique and give tribute to what is the true and kind relationship that Canada and the United States have long known.

🏠 Alameda, CA, United States

Petaled Portal is Portal now petaled. Possible of transformation to that which is here, brought to life through... C.R.E.A.T.I.V.I.T.Y. Capturing Reality Endlessly And Timelessly- Idealized Vitally Into Techniques Yieldable

🏠 Ventura, CA & Gualala, CA

Piko is built from recycled aluminum and cast aluminum ingots shaped into curved rib segments. Fabricated through custom molds, each rib contains a recessed channel for LED-neon lighting. Once assembled, the ribs form a continuous glowing interior that recalls the inner passage of a cooling lava tube. The surface will be finished in a red anodized powder coat, and programmable LED-neon lighting will animate the sculpture with a slow, ember-like pulse.

🏠 Oakland, CA, United States

A sphere which denotes the planet, with blue soda bottles for the oceans, and green for the continents. There are 5 red soda bottles which represent the planet's five garb patches, or gyres. Originally brought to playa in 2014 and again in 2025.

🏠 Santa Cruz, CA, United States

Imagine a park-like oasis on the playa, where small art finds a home and sculptures spring up as if by magic. Lamp posts glow, park benches invite you to linger, bike racks stand ready, and pockets of shade offer respite. Around you, about 25 art pieces, each no larger than 10 feet in any direction, create a spontaneous outdoor gallery. The Playa Art Park welcomes everyone—reserve your spot ahead of time or be placed as a Walk-In art project.

🏠 Oakland, CA, United States

Playa Penguins is built on the idea that wonder is a radical act. Penguins don't belong in the desert, yet here they stand—glowing, serene, and impossible. Penguins survive through unity; they huddle, rotate, and protect one another. In the harsh environment of the playa, this becomes a quiet metaphor for community and interdependence. Penguins are a reminder that even in challenging environments, we can create light, connection, and magic together.

🏠 Whitefish, MT, United States

Playa Swirl is a colorful sculpture made with 300 paper lanterns that have been coated with epoxy resin. They are suspended overhead and create a calming and relaxing place to enjoy the playa. During the day the lanterns are lit by the sun and during the night each lantern will be illuminated by LEDs.

🏠 Port Townsend, WA, United States

Something on the horizon is hard to describe, now it's closer and it looks pointy. They wonder if there are treasures to be found, only the brave will find out. While doing things for no reason, time has passed and suddenly it is not hard to describe. They find themselves talking with new friends, protected by the shade of a star-shaped shade with a 16 ft. tall pole/disco ball beacon. Taking in the moment becomes easy. Perhaps treasure still awaits, perhaps they had it all along.

🏠 Bocas del Toro, Panama

The Portal of Love is a geometric mirrored altar formed by intersecting angular frames. Suspended crystal strands catch and scatter light, creating shifting reflections that change throughout the day and glow at night. The mirrored surfaces fragment and multiply the surrounding environment, producing a dynamic field of reflected light. The installation explores love as light. Reflections blend and refract, suggesting how individual identities remain distinct while creating something shared and luminous. The piece presents connection as an expanding exchange of energy rather than a fixed form.

🏠 San Diego, CA, United States

Prelude to Winter Solstice is the first series of pieces of the larger Winter Solstice Give or Take a Week project the Misfit Toys plans to bring in 2027. A scene on a 'frozen lake' featuring three 50's/60's/70's era ice fishing shanties, each curated by a different team of artists, surrounded by an old wooden dock, vintage winter sports gear and other ephemera, and a shoreline edge bounded by aged wooden posts with hand painted signs warning of 'thin ice', subtle puzzles and other easter eggs to discover.

🏠 San Francisco, CA & Bolinas, CA

Primitive Obsession is a 20×20×22-foot cubic scaffolding structure containing 160 suspended LED curtains that form a walk-through volumetric light field. Within the grid, archetypal geometries emerge and dissolve: expanding spheres, fractal canopies, ascending rings, winding double helices, and shimmering constellations. Light becomes architectural, surrounding the body with shifting columns and planes of color. By transforming simple natural geometries into spatial illumination, the work explores humanity's enduring attraction to elemental forms. The installation functions as both a sculptural light environment and an interactive instrument for new media artworks and audiovisual performance.

🏠 San Francisco, CA, United States

Behold Project O.C.T.O.P.U.S.! This mechanical beast is ready and waiting to come to life, all at the turn of a crank (well, 9 cranks actually.) Created by the 9x Honorarium artists at Tyler FuQua Creations (Oregon City, OR), this is by far their most interactive and complex Playa creation to date. Inspired by the amazing works of friends Duane Flatmo and Barry Crawford, Project O.C.T.O.P.U.S. will be a finely tuned & highly detailed work of art featuring 65 points of articulation and a personality that will be sure to delight even the most grumbly DPW worker! Find out more at http://www.tylerfuquacreations.com/project-o.c.t.o.p.u.s..html

🏠 Oregon City, OR, United States

What is it? What's in this? You'll only find out if you pull slowly and see!

🏠 Seattle, WA, United States

A monumental, semi-glossy heart, slightly tilted, is split by a jagged crack from base to top. By day, its mirrored surface reflects the sky and people. By night, the crack glows like magma, bathing visitors in red light. A vertical light rises from the top, pulsing like a lightning signal. Touch-sensitive sensors sync the light to a visitor’s heartbeat or nearby music. The work transforms a single heart into a shared organ, where strangers synchronize pulse and presence. The project is a portrait of resilience: fractures that once felt like endings become stitched with light. Breakage is reframed not as failure, but as a channel for light and connection. Fractures become doorways. Repair is participatory.

🏠 Milan, Italy, Mexico-City, Mexico

The Purrmaid is a half cat / half mermaid interactive sculpture. She appears to float in a magical kelp forest while she plays the ukulele to her mythical sea creature friends. She tells the story of how important her world is to our real-life climate survival through messages dotted throughout the installation.

🏠 Portland, OR & Richmond, CA

QUEEN is a sculpture of a reclining woman in midlife. A pinwheel emerges from her head, its blades carrying phrases: I am 50+, I'm in my Power, I am Invisible, I give no Effs, I am Wise, I am Aging, Freedom from the Gaze, I am Becoming, I am You. QUEEN confronts the cultural erasure of aging women, rendered invisible right when they become most powerful. The sculpture's name transforms it all into power: Quantum Universal Epic Era Now!

🏠 Kingston, NY, United States

Several monumental sculptures inspired by the microscopic skeletons of radiolarian plankton — ancient organisms whose geometric beauty underpins ocean life. Handcrafted from wrought iron, sheet metal, and fiberglass resin, each form transmits light: internal LEDs pulse, shimmer, and breathe after dark. A layered soundscape weaves together ancient oceanic ambiance, present-day marine recordings, and speculative sounds from distant worlds. The result is a fully immersive environment — a meditation on time, evolution, and the shared origins of life — inviting awe and curiosity about our place in the universe.

🏠 Oakland, CA, United States

A field of swords with literary quotes meant to highlight perseverance.

🏠 Boston, MA, United States

The Reactor Project brings this futuristic pyramid altar. Play, hide, swing, react and interact with its beautiful geometry.

🏠 El Sitio, Playa Venao, Panama

REAL LOVE is a multimedia project for Burning Man 2026 by acclaimed Ukrainian artist Alexander Milov. The project brings together a monumental sculpture — the final work in a series that began with Milov’s iconic LOVE, unveiled at Burning Man in 2015 — a traveling exhibition of miniature sculptures from the same body of work, and a participatory documentary film woven from visitors’ stories, exploring a timeless question: What is real love?

🏠 Odessa, Ukraine

Reflection Connection is, in simple terms, a disco ball phone booth. It invites participants to both reflect and connect with themselves and others through its fragmented mirrors and light refractions. It evokes whimsy, turning the concept of a utilitarian phone booth on its head, to spark curiosity and wonder. It represents the light and sparkle in all of us.

🏠 Portland, OR, United States

Resilience is a larger-than-life fire art sculpture of a Water Bear, otherwise known as a Tardigrade, our amazing microscopic cousin often hailed as the most resilient organism yet discovered. Resilience the sculpture calls us to contribute our energy and to ponder our interconnectedness as we strive for Radical Resilience as a community. This 10 foot tall interactive metallic fire shooting sculpture, simultaneously ugly, cute, and powerful, awaits our participatin to bring the Tardigrade to life.

🏠 Berkeley, CA, United States

The Resonance Tree is a large-scale immersive art installation made entirely of bamboo, designed by the Resonance Studio. It responds to sun, shadow, sound, and movement. Rising seven meters above the playa, the Tree invites people to enter through woven roots, climb through the trunk, rest in canopy nets, and gather beneath a living canopy of shadow and sound. By day, its canopy filters the desert sun, and by night, the trunk glows from within. Hundreds of solar bamboo lights hung from the branches shift with the wind, casting shadows across the cracked playa.

🏠 Nevada City, CA, United States

Right Ear Right Now invites burners to embark on a Q Tip guided spiritual quest, be vulnerable and open their inner worlds to the ear. The Q Tip channels participant's negative energies into the ear relieving them of their f-ears through the act of cleaning the ear.

🏠 London, UK, & Albuquerque, NM

A three-dimensional sculptural tower composed of weathered steel pillars of varying heights arranged in a stepped, organic formation. The central pillar rises 30 feet above the playa and features an attractively illuminated object visible only from the top, creating an irresistible draw upward.

🏠 Reno, NV, United States

Take shelter and reflection as we evolve into the future. Shred hard and prosper.

🏠 Seattle, WA, United States

Have you ever had three days straight of rain (2025 maybe?) It's a bit blah. Have you had three days of straight sun? It's energizing beyond belief. This piece is a show of gratitude for those that light up our lives whether it's the sun or other human beings. The sun is also the center of our solar system and in keeping with the theme of 2026 (Axis Mundi) this will honor that. And at night our sun will still shine bright for all those that need it.

🏠 Miami, FL & Los Angeles, CA

A mysterious celestial object. A 17-foot-tall lotus bud just about to bloom. Constructed from horizontally stacked, CNC-cut wood, its exterior is heavily charred from its journey through space. This scorched shell mirrors the protective layers people carry, while the inner sanctuary remains soft and tender. Inside, fourteen massive ribs rise to a central skylight. At night, LEDs push light through precise gaps in the wood, making the structure visually breathe. Serving as a monument to stillness in an overstimulated world, the space responds to its environment. When absolute silence is sustained, a glowing galaxy reveals itself. If the quiet breaks, the stars fade.

🏠 San Francisco, CA, United States

Sapta Dvāra (The 7th Gate) explores the intersection of light, passage, and transformation. Inspired by the mythic act of walking through light to awaken inner truth, the installation symbolizes courage, renewal, and impermanence. A sequence of aligned gates forms a luminous corridor that shifts from quiet presence by day to radiant color by night. Motion-triggered light flows through the structure, creating a responsive environment animated by human presence.

🏠 Boulder, CO, United States

Saturn's House pays homage to a core human rite of passage: the Saturn Return. This piece provides counter-lore to dialogues about Saturn Returns being gnarly and harsh — offering an uplifting, sacred, and creative reprieve that honors the 6, the cube, and the world-building energy of Saturn. Cube is the shape of Earth, the shape of time, the shape of structure, the shape of Self. Cubes of Saturn reside in cities all over the world to pay respect to the God of Time. In Black Rock City — a city built in the likeness of a clock — this sculpture uplifts the architectural power of Saturn to create realities that support life, ingenuity, creativity, and power.

🏠 South Lake Tahoe, CA, United States

Two chairs sit facing each other under the pin pricked starry sky of a Deep Playa night. Lanterns gently flicker on a warm red rug. A wheel sits between them begging to be spun. Spin it or don't. Sit and rest or don't. Speak or remain silent. Look into each others' eyes. Look at the stars. Look into your souls. Or don't. Find Sawubona and you might find something even deeper than you ever imagined.

🏠 Bozeman, MT, United States

A school of over 450 green transparent fish contructed of recycled 2 liter soda bottles swimming in three 15 foot repurposed trampoline hoops. Individual movements build a constantly changing whole, illustrating the importance as us individually as we strengthen our community.

🏠 Santa Cruz, CA, United States

Septima is a 28 foot diameter structural free standing sphere, comprised of the vertical intersection of four 7 pointed septogram or heptagram stars, constructed of large engineered timbers A solid structural platform at nine feet above the playa will provide space to congregate and explore the structure from within. The perimeter face of each timber will be channeled for programmable LED's that will illuminate the sculpture at night. From the sacred to the profane the number 7 has woven itself into the DNA of our species, imbedded in our theology, spirituality, numerology & metaphysical realms: 7 days of creation 7 Chakras 7 planets The number 7 is integral to Muslim and Jewish mysticism. 7 pitches in the heptatonic scale the 7 deadly sins

🏠 Joshua Tree, CA and Sebastopol, CA

The Serendipity Machine stands as a whimsical, steampunk-inspired installation, evoking the charm of an old-fashioned invention designed to transform the unexpected into positive outcomes. The structure stands as a gentle provocation for human connection, offering a moment of pause amid the chaos of the playa. Each interaction is designed to evoke reflection, emotional honesty, and spontaneous encounters between strangers. Blending analog charm with emotional depth, the piece transforms fleeting moments into meaningful ones, making space for surprise, story, and shared humanity.

🏠 San Francisco Bay Area, CA, United States

For millennia, cultures around the world have told strikingly similar stories about a small group of stars in the night sky being seven sisters. Whether known as Pleaides, Subaru, Karatgurk, Dilγéhé, Makali'i, or countless other names, this constellation has held deep spiritual and mythological significance for peoples around the world, with some centering their calendar around its rising. The Seven Sisters is a three-dimensional model of this star cluster, allowing participants to see a familiar constellation from new perspectives and learn about the convergent myths told about it.

🏠 Oakland, CA, United States

A large, immersive installation honoring ancient shadow puppetry and theatre. Twenty‑four aluminum arches—each 100 feet long and rising 15 feet at the apex—symbolize the hours of the day and form an expanding circular layout. Three‑foot canvas bands stretch over the arcs, creating shifting shadow patterns across a 175‑by‑175‑foot footprint. The open structure allows wind and visitors to flow through freely inviting self-expression. At night, backlit shadow panels and vibrant lighting transform the space into a dynamic arena for performances, including fire spinning, "Shadow Play" and music.

🏠 North Bethesda, MD, United States

Shoe Tree is an interactive exploration of urban legend and rumor, inviting spontaneous and unsanctioned participation in deep reverence for guerrilla and folk art traditions. Salvaged materials and a roadside vibe let the passerby decide if Shoe Tree exists as a symbolic display or an unsightly eyesore.

🏠 Bend, OR, United States

Our coffee shop is for the Builders of Burning Man. It is a highly modified Canned Ham trailer that is now has a tilt-out counter, a sound system, solar power, a fan, and a place for our team to keep their belongings. The trailer is 16' long in total, so it only occupies a single parking space. There are stools for seating, and shade provided by the trailer itself.

🏠 Tucson AZ, AZ, United States

This combines thrill and community within deep playa. The swinging structure has four seats, and can whirl you around in a circle. It's the perfect place to admire the stars and bask in the desert beauty.

🏠 Detroit, MI, United States

SK8Z! Once again Dragnet brings a group of artists' work to the deepest playa...40 skateboard decks will be placed on 40 T-stakes on the trash fence, each uniquely decorated and representing one of the themes and years of the 40th anniversary of Burning Man. Recycled, thrift stores, garage sales, found objects are used for the subject matter...you may remember the tennis rackets, tikis or fish, just some of past art on the fence...this year will be the best, so please get out to the deepest point of the playa...BlinkingManCamp97 continues to bring it! A place where Excesssss just never seems to be enough...as we have said since our first year in the BlueLightDistrict: While the others are thinking, we'll be blinking.

🏠 Manhattan Beach, CA, United States

Solar Prisms is a collection of cuboctahedrons comprised of solar panels and light diffusers. They capture light, store it as energy, and emit it again as a colorful and beautiful light show. They can be placed anywhere the sun shines and operate indefinitely.

🏠 San Francisco, CA, United States

By day, Spectral Scarab glimmers in the desert sun like a sacred artifact emerging from the Playa. At sunset, hidden light begins to awaken—warm ambers fading into deep violet as the sky descends into night. After dark, projection imagery blooms across its wings: celestial constellations, underworld tones, and radiant sunrise hues. Inspired by Khepri, the Egyptian scarab who carried the sun across the sky, the work echoes the Playa's daily ritual of dawn and dusk. Spectral Scarab becomes a modern Axis Mundi—a luminous threshold where light, shadow, memory, and rebirth converge. @tremendousmachinefarm

🏠 Salem, WI, United States

Experience speed without distance through revolutionary angular momentum. At the center of the merry-go-round, stand straight and tall and feel your shifting weight translate into revolutionary motion. Become the axis and have a look around! Eyes on the horizon, and remember to BREATHE!

🏠 Ames, Iowa & New York, New York

Spots is a collection of oversized map pins appearing individually across Black Rock City, each eight feet tall, black and bold, outlined in reflective yellow tape. A six-foot flag pole rises above each pin, its label lit by solar lights at night. Every pin swivels so it can be read from any direction. Each pin marks a specific kind of human moment: The Hugging Spot, The Giggling Spot, with more arriving in future years. They borrow the visual language of digital navigation and plant it in the most radically human place on earth, marking locations found on no map app. Spots asks nothing. It simply identifies what is already possible anywhere two strangers stand near each other, unhurried, present, closer to something real than expected.

🏠 Santa Barbara, CA, United States

Stellar is an artwork representing nebula. Through Stellar, we want to remind ourselves of the vastness of our world and how, on a scale this large, we, humanity, are a single unity rather than divided by differences. (We don't want to minimize anyone or anything, but we do want to emphasize the wider connection we all share.)

🏠 Shanghai, China

STOP and Reflect is a giant traffic signal in deep playa. It is best viewed at night when it is brightly lit against the inky black darkness of the playa. Burning Man can be a frenzied experience...When the light is RED Burners are encouraged to STOP wherever they are, appreciate the art that surrounds them, take a moment to soak in the experience, form a lifetime memory, and move on again when green.

🏠 St George, UT, United States

Stormborn: The Tyrant of Lightning is an electrifying fusion of prehistoric power and elemental energy—a life-sized sculpture of a Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton, composed entirely of sculpted lightning. This installation envisions the raw force of nature, where ancient life meets the untamed fury of the storm. The skeletal form is not forged from bone but is instead realized through the dynamic, branching patterns of lightning itself, captured in glowing arcs of energy.

🏠 Reno, NV, United States

It's an ordinary streetlight.

🏠 Escondido, CA, United States

STRUBY is an offering to the playa: Guardian, Protector, and Empress. A guardian form where participants can return to their bodies, and experience care as something physical, shared, and real.

🏠 San Francisco, CA; Ibiza, Spain & Berlin, Germany

sunny side up is an interactive and immersive architectural art and light installation that mirrors the horizon where the sun meets the sea, capturing the ephemeral beauty of sunrise and sunset. It reflects on impermanence and the quiet presence of hope, grounded in the natural rhythm that every sunset is followed by another sunrise.

🏠 Hong Kong, HKSAR and San Francisco, CA

The sentinels stand in a line, waiting to greet the new day's sun. They keep our citizens safe, and warn all who would enter.

🏠 Gresham, OR, United States

A large surfboard pinwheel, made from hand painted, repurposed boards from the playas of Southern California, to the playa of BRC, inspiring awe as it spins with the wind.

🏠 Los Angeles, CA, United States

Giant Tea Bag

🏠 Truckee, CA, United States

The Temple Braziers are wooden altars at the entrances to the Temple of the Moon, and serve as focal points for the ancient spiritual practice of burning incense (palo santo, sage, and others) allowing deep connection and spiritual expression.

🏠 Seattle, WA & San Francisco, CA

The sun and the moon form a foundation for all life in our solar system. If you are patient you will be rewarded by harnessing the light of the morning and evening sun. If you linger, the moon's reflection will be in your hands and if you pay attention, it will remind us of the land we walk on.

🏠 Oakland, CA, United States

The Temple of the Moon is inspired by the Queen of the Night flower, a fragrant desert cactus blossom (Epiphyllum oxypetalum) which blooms only once each year, at night, and whose flowers wilt before dawn. In this act of ephemeral beauty, we find a profound metaphor for our own brief beautiful lives on this planet, as well as for Burning Man itself, which blossoms each year in the dust of the playa, and then disappears without a trace. We believe that this act of impermanence demands presence. The flower blooms for only a few hours. If you blink, you will miss it. The only possible response is to slow down, to be as present as possible, and to witness.

🏠 Oakland, CA, United States

tensegrity + tesseract = tenseract

🏠 San Francisco, CA, United States

The Black Rock Guidestones rise in defiance of the arsonists who destroyed the mysterious Georgia Guidestones - a formation meant to offer humanity guidance in the event of a global cataclysm. A 1:1 scale adaptation of that intent, suited to our culture and moment, re-imagined in the desert. Three 20-foot, double-sided panels invite us to remember our responsibility to one another and the larger whole. Speaking across ages and languages, weaving from this shared bounty an earnest offering for tomorrow.

🏠 Charlottesville, VA, United States

This sculpture represents our common ancestors from the motherland, who watch over and unite us. There will be five ancestors, each 10 feet tall, standing in a circle of energy. The space is a place of protection and spirituality. It is meant to unify us and make us feel safe in communing with our ancestors. While standing inside the circle, people can pull ancestral knowledge and wisdom from the Earth.

🏠 Eureka, CA, United States

A colorful large open stage area with a central covered pool with a deposit area is visible. There is a hanging face-type art sculpture on poles. There are shaded elemental-looking art seats and interactive elements surrounding the center area. The vibe is to rest and reflect. The center area has a water feature for some sounds to be heard.

🏠 Topanga Cannon, CA, United States

The Council of Animals (What to do about the Humans) is a piece that explores our relationship with the other members of our animal family, and encourages us to think about what our relations might say to us, if they spoke in words we could understand. The goal of the piece, really, is to shift our perspectives, help us build a better word-castle to live in, that includes the rest of our family. We have the power to change the future. We've been in a rush for so long, as a sub-species, racing towards uncertain futures during troubled times. It's time to pause, stop, think about what we're doing, have realistic discussions about our choices, our plans, and our collective futures. As one life, on one planet, with nowhere else to go.

🏠 Tonasket, WA, United States

The Divine Hand hovers above the playa, suspended between sky and dust. It is for seekers who understand they may not receive what they want, but instead what they need. Some pass without noticing. Others pause and feel something shift, through a quiet, personal gift.

🏠 Austin, TX, United States

The Eagle of Entitlement stands as a proud and commanding monument housing the Museum of Entitlement, a definitive presentation tracing the history of entitlement as both tradition and trait with the depth, rigor, and continuity it warrants. This glowing emblem connects big names, fun facts, lesser-known moments, and evolving stylistic trends—from broad cultural patterns to those emerging within Black Rock City itself—assembled into a cohesive and authoritative record. Presented with institutional gravity and confidence, the installation frames entitlement as an enduring force shaped across eras by spectacle, access, and chance, and asserts its place within the documented record of human experience.

🏠 Los Angeles, CA and Las Vegas, NV

The essence of youth and nostalgia of past carousels draws people back to the fun and familiar. Participants ride around on different types of creatures from the imaginations of different artists with rolling flames above the participants' heads, bringing joy to those who ride and those who watch. The Flaming Carousel is a reworking of the classic carousel and revives the building of creatures with new materials from the imaginations of different artists from around the world. It is both a sculpture and a platform for other artists to explore the medium.

🏠 Atlanta, GA & Portland, OR

This is the Temple of the builders. A typical garage full of all the things you'd expect. Tools, storage, memories, seasonal things, equipment, etc. We hang out here and talk, drink, fix, build, jam out, play games, create and tinker. The Garage is the home of the laborers and builders who go unseen but make things happen. The hidden heroes.

🏠 Topanga, CA & Reno, NV

A monumental illuminated sculpture spanning approximately 120 feet in length and 27 feet in height across the open playa. The installation spells the Hebrew phrase "ואהבת לרעך כמוך" — "Love your neighbor as yourself." Constructed from steel and elevated on slender supports, the letters appear to float above the desert horizon. By day the structure reflects sunlight with a shimmering golden presence; by night integrated lighting transforms the words into a radiant beacon, expressing a timeless principle of empathy, reciprocity, and shared humanity.

🏠 Los Angeles, CA, United States

A monumental open-air cathedral rises from the playa as a skeletal framework of towers, arches, and luminous panels. The structure evokes both a gothic ruin and a futuristic folly, blending sacred architecture with raw industrial materials. By day, sunlight passes through colorful translucent panels that resemble stained glass, casting shifting color across the desert floor. By night, integrated lighting transforms the framework into a radiant beacon of light and geometry visible across the playa. The installation represents a temporary cathedral for Black Rock City: a place where monumental architecture, light, and the desert landscape combine to create a shared space for collective presence and interactivity.

🏠 New York, NY, United States

The Love Nest features a large wooden pelican carrying a nest on its back, filled with soft cushions. The installation is designed to inspire connection, community, reflection, and a sense of safety. As people gather within the nest to rest, breathe, and release, it becomes a living heartbeat of togetherness, a cradle for laughter, tears, silence, and song. Within this space, the nest offers a sanctuary for wanderers, dreamers, and the winged spirit within us all. The piece draws inspiration from a sacred space once shared amongst friends. In that place, they felt as though they sat inside a nest and were held, safe and free to speak their deepest truths. The experience left them bound together by love and wanting to share with others.

🏠 Modesto, CA, United States

The Man has had a Brain each year since 2018. It is made during the Man build using wood scraps from its ribs. It is designed to be placed in the Man's head, though instead, it travels the playa on a bike trailer to fill up with thoughts written on paper by participants. The Philosophical Center Potluck Noodle House and Lemonade Stand gazebo, on the playa, is its Home Base. The Brain burns with the Man each year. The big idea behind this project is to create an opportunity to make the Man touchable and Participatory. It is encouraged to share your thought with others around to give the moment an extra dose of psycho-magic.

🏠 Willits, CA, United States

The Oracle explores the human need for answers and the vulnerability of asking questions out loud. Speaking to a towering mask in the desert echoes ancient rituals of surrender to something larger and wiser - or simply different from oneself. The twist is that the "oracle" may offer wisdom, absurdity, or nothing at all. The sacred and the ridiculous coexist. A divine voice might offer life advice or ask if you've seen their bicycle. When participants become the voice of the Oracle, the power dynamic reverses. They experience the strange authority of the unseen voice and must decide who they are in that moment: sage, trickster, or both. The Oracle asks whether meaning comes from the answer itself - or from the act of asking, listening, and connecting.

🏠 Poissy, France & Berkeley, CA

The Portal of Collective Imagination is a 20-foot circular arch constructed from recycled aluminum, bamboo, and mycelium-based panels. By day, it appears as a luminous geometric halo rising from the playa — open, inviting, and quietly monumental. By night, it becomes a responsive environment: light ripples across the structure, projections bloom within its interior, and subtle soundscapes shift with human presence.

🏠 San Francisco, CA, United States

Your heart is racing, your head is spinning. The Race of Hearts presents a physical interpretation of falling in love and the swirl of emotions it brings. Part steampunk automaton, part 1930s amusement ride, this heart-themed merry-go-round was conceived from Playa love and as a love letter to the Playa. BRC citizens ride the spinning sculpture on heart-shaped bicycle seats and arms engraved with emotion words. At its center, an armored heart opens to reveal two cartoon-style hearts dancing together. The armored shell symbolizes self-protection, while the dancing hearts represent acceptance, trust, and safety. On solar panels heart frames, BRC citizens write their Playa love names. The entire structure resembles an ace of hearts from above.

🏠 Deeth, NV and San Francisco, CA

If art is how you decorate space, and music is how you decorate time, The Royal Trumpets do both. Dancing in SpaceTime, The Royal Trumpets create beautiful displays of sonic explosions-literally. 2 handmade pipe organ pipes on each of the six trumpets create the 12 notes of the chromatic scale. In the day you can find them making sound with compressed air, but come nightfall things get SPICY!

🏠 Rochester, NY, United States

Rising from the playa, The Serpent forms a living Axis Mundi—a luminous bridge between earth, sky, and the unseen worlds between. At its core, a radiant spine of light pulses and breathes in response to the presence of participants, revealing that the energy of the city itself animates the work. Ascending toward the heavens while rooted in the dust, the Serpent embodies humanity's endless cycle of transformation—an eternal journey of becoming, where descent, ascent, and rebirth weave the story of our shared existence.

🏠 Dallas, TX & New Orleans, LA

The Solar Library is a rhythmic repetition of triangular yellow huts with bright, sun-orange doors. The steel-framed huts present solar panels at an ideal angle to the sun. At night, they bathe in soft yellow light reminiscent of the sunlight collected all day. Artists apply for a library card so they can build battery-powered art, knowing they have dedicated solar charging capacity reserved to charge their batteries. The mission is to remove the noise and fumes of generators from playa art without the proliferation of panel farms.

🏠 Austin, TX, United States

The Sound of Time will be a large mechanical clocktower that will tell several different time scales, with gears of various sizes turning at various speeds. The moving mechanics will also be playing sounds, notes, bells, keys, gongs and more.

🏠 Reno, NV, United States

The Speed of the Earth art installation enables participants to sense the speed of the Earth by carefully coordinating a mile-long row of strobes to flash at the rate of Earth's rotation at the latitude of Black Rock City. The timed flash rushes along the line of strobes placed exactly east-to-west, just as the Earth rotates, at the exact speed of the rotation. Standing still, a participant sees the flash moving in the far distance. In a second it is racing toward them. Then in another few seconds they feel the velocity as this cannonball of light zooms past them. It is a direct visceral feeling for what was formerly only an intellectual concept.

🏠 San Francisco, CA, United States

The Starting Line presents a familiar race structure reimagined as a moment of beginning. It represents the shift from reflection to action, what is released during the burn and what is carried forward after it ends. Rooted in the idea of taking the first mile toward who one wants to become, the piece honors the spirit of a fellow Burner and the belief that meaningful change starts with a single step. The installation turns a recognizable form into a shared experience of intention, connection, and moving forward.

🏠 State College, PA, United States

Confronted with the excesses of our contemporary lifestyle, the Tear of Midas serves as both an ecological warning and a symbolic call for collective awareness. Crafted from wood, this "tear" represents a drop of oxygen—decarbonizing the future while reawakening our imagination. It invites us to reflect on new ways of living and designing, through architecture that harmonizes with and draws inspiration from the natural world.

🏠 Egletons and Betchat, France

"the weight of light" is a frozen moment of celestial reckoning transformed into an arc between the shadows of how we power our world and the brilliance of how we might transform it. Emerging from the dust, a monumental lightning bolt commands the power of electricity. By day, the structure is a prismatic crystal. Its facets, crafted from upcycled dichroic panels, fracture light into a spectrum of iridescence. By night, participants can charge the bolt to create a massive, vertical lightning strike and boom of thunder. Surrounding this central pillar are 8 lightning shards that form a 50-foot sacred circle. Each enshrines an interactive world that illuminates the "weight of light" -- the nature of fossil-fuel based electricity production, its environmental impact, and our power to transform it.

🏠 Huntsville, UT, United States

The Wishing Tree is a glowing sculpture whose branches bloom with suspended lanterns that sway gently in the wind. By day the tree appears like a desert mirage; by night, participants make wishes to activate softly pulsing lights that travel through the illuminated trunk and canopy. As lanterns fill with light, the tree becomes a constellation of collective hopes; an Axis Mundi where personal intentions rise skyward, transforming the sculpture into a radiant beacon for reflection, healing, and shared possibility.

🏠 Rockford, IL, United States

A small collection of meanderings perched on a tree at the edge of the playa.

🏠 San Francisco Bay Area, CA, United States

Time Drop gives you the ability to control the rate and direction of time in an infinite rain storm...and uses time travel to help people solve minor plumbing issues.

🏠 Albuquerque, NM, United States

TITANIC is a wooden ship, split in half, sinking into the playa. Dynamic, interactive lighting will illuminate the vessel at night, while flame effects will blast from the top two twin smoke stacks. A climbable, amphitheater-forming sculpture for citizens of BRC to watch a performance or a sunset from, TITANIC represents the hubris of man and his faith in technology. As we continue to extract resources from the world at ever greater scale, will we find a sustainable equilibrium with the planet? Or will it end in tragedy? We are running the experiment live.

🏠 San Francisco, CA, United States

The installation presents a totemic stack of animals drawn from symbolic traditions across cultures. A tortoise supports a globe, with a deer, an owl, and butterflies rising above. Inspired by stories of the world carried on a turtle, the work reflects on humanity's relationship with the Earth. Each animal embodies a quality: the deer, gentleness, the owl, wisdom, and the butterfly, transformation. Constructed using reclaimed and repurposed materials, the piece reflects on consumption, sustainability, and the possibility of renewal, offering a quiet meditation on the balance between human activity and the living world.

🏠 Calgary, Canada

The human ape, grounded and evolving from a single cell blob in a sea of primordial mud, pushes up towards the light, climbing the ladder of an elongated spine, reaching for the stars, beholds the glory and terror of its own existence, begins to comprehend its connection to everything, slowly realizing itself as nothing less than the entirety of existence, the eternal "I AM" looking through its own eyes, mumbling its own name, as its understanding expands into the entire cosmos. OM MANI PADME HUM

🏠 Felton, CA, United States

Trash Fence Souvenirs is the only unofficial inauthentic vendor of the Black Rock Festival. TFS is a playful, satirical installation that offers inauthentic memorabilia. The offerings are intentionally humorous with a variety of tongue-in-cheek items such as: Burn Ur Own Man kit, Dust Keepers, Pony Parts, and Playa Trading Cards. Playa Trading Cards is our version of a fun educational way to highlight individuals, artists and artist groups, theme camps, mutant vehicles, etc. that contribute to the wonderful world of BRC.

🏠 Little Silver, NJ

A curious piece resembling a tree, but not quite. A place for the exhausted and cosmically lost to warm-up and chill-out.

🏠 Black Rock City, NV, United States

Tree of Photon aims to express the harmonious fusion of technology and nature, where photons symbolize the invisible energies that connect all life. It delves into the quantum poetry of light, where photons represent both scientific precision and metaphorical enlightenment. It seeks to bridge the gap between human touch and technological response, suggesting that, in an era of digital isolation, physical interaction can reignite communal bonds. Light-based art can evoke profound emotional responses, fostering a sense of unity in communal settings like Burning Man. It communicates that small actions, like a simple hug, can ripple outward, altering the world around us and highlighting our interconnectedness in an often chaotic universe.

🏠 Białystok, Poland

A 24-foot tall trinity of anthropomorphic figures, representing the connections of our bodies to the earth and our aspirational reach to the stars, have illuminated heads, and are designed to hold citizens' offerings of hopes and wishes. Imagery generated by AI, accompanied by music, will project hopeful future possibilities in how we will co-exist with AI.

🏠 Oakland, CA & Railroad Flat, CA

A freestanding architectural fragment: a standard exterior house door centered within two flat reclaimed-wood walls. The structure faces deep playa on one side and Black Rock City on the other, positioning the doorway between origin and possibility. The door opens to open playa, revealing not a house or destination but the horizon. It explores limbo as a physical space — neither entry nor exit, but a moment suspended between worlds. This installation is a tribute to the unhinged, the fine art of socially acceptable loitering. Freestanding excuse to linger with intent. A place to being everywhere and nowhere all at once. Lean in, take up space, and stay a while.

🏠 Quincy, CA, United States

The Unity Locus Focuser pulls in the universe's energies and focuses them into its spherical Third Eye. Participants walk along either of its catwalks to its Third Eye, then immerse their heads within it, experiencing the energy and views from within it together. Unity within the Third Eye is manifested through sounds, lighting, warmth, inspiring views, and the other participant's close proximity. The two sides of the installation are diversely different, similar to the opposing opinions of a polarizing issue, but that straddling between them is a unifying truth that helps to see things from a more holistic perspective.

🏠 Corte Madera, CA, United States

UNPOP, or Unpopular Music, is an intimate listening environment in deepest playa. It features exquisite, detailed sound-works, including field recordings, abstract electroacoustic music, ambient textures, and other (mostly) non-beat-oriented sonic experiences, composed by many artists from around the world. Encompassing a circular space, the piece is built around eight custom-built Hemisphere loudspeakers, which enclose a listening area complete with comfortable seating.

🏠 Chicago, IL & Edmonton, Alberta, Canada

Untitled (omphalos) is a sculptural installation composed of eleven burned firewood towers and two viewing platforms made from sanded, charred wood. Rising from the open playa, the work imagines the omphalos, the mythic center of the universe, as a place of threshold and convergence. The blackened towers form a gathering point between opposing forces: life and death, striving and surrender, doing and being. By day, the installation casts long shadows across the desert floor; by night, it glows from within and around its edges, creating a quiet field of light. Visitors may move among the towers, climb the platforms, touch the wood, and inhabit the charged space between endings and beginnings.

🏠 Marfa, TX, United States

Up Nort Art Shanty is a weathered ice fishing shack improbably perched on the desert lakebed where ancient Lake Lahontan once stretched for miles. Raised above the dust like a relic from another shoreline, it feels like a refuge for the weary burner wandering deep playa. Inside, a simulated ice fishing scene unfolds among fishing gear, odd memorabilia, and quietly unfolding stories of native cutthroat trout and prehistoric waters. Equal parts nostalgia, humor, and ecological storytelling, the shanty blends northern fishing culture with the deep history of the Great Basin.

🏠 Salt Lake City, UT, United States

VORTEX is a trio of illuminated cubes set against the open desert, scaled at 2m, 3m, and 4m. Each form is wrapped in a continuous black-and-white spiral printed onto tensioned Lycra, creating the illusion of a deep, collapsing void. By day, the stark geometry fractures perception against the horizon; by night, the cubes glow from within, transforming into luminous beacons. The work explores perception as unstable and subjective, compressing a sense of infinite depth into finite form and revealing how reality shifts through movement, light, and perspective.

🏠 Currumbin, Australia

Voxelite transforms three-dimensional space into a canvas of light, responding to interaction with rippling patterns that seem to communicate in a visual language all its own. No two encounters are identical, as this photon playground dialogues with those who discover it—every visit revealing a different pattern within its luminous architecture. Venture into a realm where light doesn't just shine—it breathes, dances, and plays. A metal tripod suspends over 20,000 LEDs in a hexagonal profile. Three complementing stations at ground level contain sensors and speakers, inviting approach with glowing bands of light.

🏠 Vancouver, Canada

Just as you found this water in the dust of Black Rock City, may you also find your own oasis in the deserts of default world.

🏠 Mountain View, CA, United States

We The Sheeple reflects on the volatile state of the electorate; how rhetoric and weaponization of the media sways the masses as easily as the wind blows! Imagine an old world public square aesthetic: two wooden soap boxes equipped with megaphones face off from opposing ends of a field filled with 50 wind-driven sheep on swivels, all illuminated by Edison-style bulbs. Intellectually serious, yet physically whimsical. Very much red, white, and ewe!

🏠 San Jose, CA, United States

Well, Well, Well is a full-scale wishing well standing in the deep playa. In a place with no water, it is the last thing anyone expects to find and the first thing everyone recognizes. A windlass frame straddles the rim, a rope hangs into the dark, and at the bottom sits a screen showing quietly moving water. When the crank is turned, a bucket descends and a short phrase surfaces, something between a fortune and a question. At night, light rises from the well, and sound drifts up from inside. The piece sits with the distance between what something promises and what it delivers, and trusts that language, offered in the right place, is its own kind of water.

🏠 Eugene, OR; Seattle, WA; Los Angeles, CA; Brooklyn, NY

The Wild Free Art display is once again on the playa and will showcase original artworks. Created to share my vision of spreading love, kindness, and acceptance to everyone. Come and see what speaks to your soul and meet the artist. The universe is calling, come and see what it has to say to you through the art.

🏠 Roseville, CA, United States

Tiny worlds are hidden behind doors within doors. Like accidentally clicking a pop-up ad, behind every door lies a carefully curated surprise, though thankfully none of them will ask you to update Adobe Flash Player.

🏠 London, Ontario, Canada, and USA

Standing a commanding nine feet tall, this sculpture "windswept" makes the viewer look up. Made from industrial steel, the rigidity and durability mirrors the tempered strength of the feminine spirit. Her eyes are peacefully closed not in a sign of surrender, but of profound internal focus - the ability to find a centered "inner calm" while navigating external headwinds.

🏠 Fort Collins, CO, United States

The philosophy of The Stump centers on the balance between nature and human creation. How life, even when altered, continues to flow through transformation. It reflects the cycle of decay and renewal: a fallen tree reborn through art, machinery, and water. The merging of living textures with gears and chains symbolizes harmony between organic and industrial worlds. The continuous sound of flowing water represents life's persistence, while mist and light evoke breath and rebirth. This piece invites reflection on our connection to the environment, reminding us that progress and nature are not opposites, but parts of the same evolving rhythm.

🏠 Redmond, WA

The project is an antique table and chairs with an antique phone made up in the past, with a Frame that welcomes you to words left unsaid, calls to the other side.

🏠 Sams Valley & Klamath Falls, Oregon

Yggdrasil rises from the dust as an echo of the ancient Tree of Life from Norse mythology — the living bridge between the spiritual and the physical worlds. Reaching 22 ft into the desert sky and spreading 33 ft in diameter, its circular crown is woven with bamboo mandalas that breathe with wind, light, and human presence. Built from laminated bamboo, Yggdrasil is both myth and experiment — a sustainable pilot exploring how bamboo lives on the playa and how it transforms in fire. At its final moment, the tree returns to flame — completing the cycle between earth, spirit, and ash.

🏠 San Juan del Sur, Nicaragua & Roskilde, Denmark

ZARVAN, the ancient Persian deity of time, is a 23-foot interactive sculpture in the form of a monumental human head that explores perception, communication, and collective presence. Visitors can look through internal periscopes aligned with the eyes to experience the surrounding landscape through ZARVAN’s gaze. Integrated speaking tubes within the ears allow people on opposite sides of the sculpture to speak and listen through the structure itself, making the work a vessel for human connection and shared presence. Its luminous crown, inspired by traditional Persian stained glass, responds to human presence with shifting colored light, while the faceted steel body draws from Persian rug geometry and is hand painted with Persian rug motifs, embedding cultural memory into the form. Through sight, sound, and participation, ZARVAN becomes a living, responsive system.

🏠 Reno, NV, United States

We provide meals to the art builders.

🏠 Livermore, CA, United States