The Fire Hummingbird at Burning Man

The Fire Hummingbird is a large-scale installation created by Adrián Arias for Burning Man 2025, selected as an Honoraria Project. Inspired by ancestral traditions and Día de los Muertos, the pyramid structure and luminous hummingbird formed an intimate gathering space where people sang, shared stories, and connected with ancestors and loved ones no longer with us.

I joined the project as a collaborating artist (August 21–28), contributing to construction in Oakland, transportation to Black Rock City, on-playa installation, and documentary photography. In Indigenous traditions, the hummingbird is often understood as a messenger between life and death; here, it held space for ritual and remembrance. Anaís Azul performed live charango music inside the structure, guiding participants into meditation as they wrote messages to loved ones. These notes were collected in an urn and later carried to the Temple burn, sending words to ancestors through fire and smoke.

The project brought together construction, performance, ritual, and documentation as a collective practice—building and tending a space for grief, memory, and connection. In a place often defined by excess, The Fire Hummingbird offered a quieter counterpoint: a temporary architecture of care, returning attention and meaning to the desert.