A Look Back at Burning Man’s Most Iconic Art Cars

The festival will soon return and bring with it a new theme. So in the meantime, let’s look back on some of Burning Man’s most iconic art cars.

The time is almost upon us. Black Rock City – a desiccated lake basin in the arid, harsh Nevada desert – is about to bustle and brim with unbridled art and life, for Burning Man 2023 inexorably approaches. Taking place from August 27^th through September 4^th, the festivities are a celebration of life’s serendipity, creativity, generosity, and cruelty. From impromptu dust storms to the extreme temperature range (sweltering in the day and frigid in the evening), to an iconic mix of art cars and installations, burners prepare to brave joy and anguish, intensity and passivity, creation and destruction. All is fair in love and war.

This year’s theme, “ANIMALIA,” will inevitably inspire a peculiar exploration of nature. According to The Burning Man Journal, “This year’s Burning Man theme will celebrate the animal world and our place in it – animals real and imagined, mythic and remembered – and explore the curious mental constructs that allow us to believe that imagined animals are real, real animals are imagined, and that somehow, despite all evidence to the contrary, mankind is somehow not part of the animal kingdom.” The Burning Man art cars that will emerge from this new identity will be fascinating for attendees to explore.

In anticipation of the journey about to unfold, let’s stroll down memory lane with some of Burning Man art cars, mechanical animalia that freely roam the playa, transporting humans through this curious world of desert radicalism…

To view a comprehensive list of this year’s art installations, venture here.

To learn more about the talented photographer Scott London, whose work is featured above, venture here.

To listen to the music of Miki Beach, a Miami-based camp of house music, friends, and artists, see below.