ARTS & CULTURE

Photos: Wacky, Wild Art From This Year’s Burning Man Festival

Feast your eyes on some of this year’s wildest art installations

Chris Heller

Former Assistant Digital Editor, Humanities

September 8, 2015

"Metaheart" by Jonathan Hamilton Courtesy of Flickr user BLM Nevada

Kevin Clark's Medusa in all her glowing fury Courtesy of Flickr user Bexx Brown-Spinelli

Festival citizens wander into Rebecca Anders' "Illumacanth." Courtesy of Flickr user Michael Prados

Skeletons relax outside tents. Courtesy of Flickr user Bexx Brown-Spinelli

"Dream" by Laura Kimpton and Jeff Schomberg Courtesy of Flickr user Bexx Brown-Spinelli

"Medusa Madness" by Kevin Clark Courtesy of Flickr user Bexx Brown-Spinelli

"Brainchild" by Michael Christian Courtesy of Flickr user Bexx Brown-Spinelli

The Man Courtesy of Flickr user Bexx Brown-Spinelli

"Penny the Goose" by Mr. and Mrs. Ferguson Courtesy of Flickr user Bexx Brown-Spinelli

Every year, during the last week in August, tens of thousands flock to Nevada’s Black Rock Desert to take part in the Burning Man Festival. They’re drawn by the festival’s radical culture of decommodification, as well as a jaw-dropping collection of outsider art. The art installations tend toward the tremendous and the surreal: fire-spewing sea creatures, mythical Greek monsters and uncanny sculptures of human bodies are all familiar sights on the playa. And, of course, there’s also the annual, ritualistic burning of a massive wooden effigy known only as “the Man.”

Estimates suggest that 70,000 people attended this year’s Burning Man, which ended on Sunday. Some of the festival’s weirdest and wildest installations, organized around the theme "Carnival of Mirrors," are collected above.