Since the year 2000, artists – notably including Temple originator David Best – have created intricate, elaborate and secularly sacred temple art installations as part of the Burning Man festival. Each year’s design is inspired by a different theme, such as the Temple of the Mind (2000), the Temple of Flux (2010) and the massive Temple of Transition (2011).
The Temple serves as a somber space for reflection, meditation and especially memorial, as participants create and leave behind their memento mori in the form of graffiti messages and intensely personal tokens of love, life and loss – all to be consumed in flames at the festival’s end.