Below are artworks funded by Sand Mandala Foundation as well as by associated entities
Afrikaburn 2026
Sandfish II
Chip Snaddon
Sandfish II revisits AfrikaBurn 2024's Sandfish project which consisted of five large rod puppets activated in the Binnekring. It is a sculptural installation activated by the elements. The Clanwilliam Sandfish is an endemic species of the Cederberg and Tankwa Karoo that is facing extinction, and the creative projects have been informed and supported by the Freshwater Research Centre's Saving Sandfish project. The installation enjoyed a beautiful placement on a slightly elevated grassy dune in a quieter sector of the Binnekring, and elicited a gratifyingly positive response.
Initial concerns around the hard industrial construction and comparatively static nature of the installation proved to be unfounded as the fish turned gently on their tripods in the shifting winds and reflected the desert colours and changing light in their dusty metallic surfaces.
Drifters Landing
Brendan Hurner
A highly interactive artwork.
Wonderfully bonding for our camp members, with crew operating and supporting each other in the running of the project.
Community queued with delight at the opportunity to be caringly guided through the experience of jumping/falling from the crows nest.
This huge symbolic significance for so many was evident as they received a stamp of confirmation that they had "landed" the jump, with huge smiles, emotions, warm embraces and overflowing gratitude to the crew.
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Woza Azania
Zizipho Gcasamba
Woza Azania was successfully presented as a roving performance featuring a large-scale human puppet, music, movement, and interactive engagement with participants across Tankwa Town.
The project brought together performers and creatives who collaborated in the development, construction, and activation of the puppet and performance elements. As the performance moved through the city, participants engaged with the work through spontaneous interaction, conversation, and shared moments of
play and celebration.
One of the main challenges encountered during the event was the strong wind, which affected some performance activities and required the team to adapt how the puppet and performance were activated. Despite these weather challenges, the project was successfully delivered and well received by participants.
The support received through the grant contributed towards materials, transport, food, and production costs, making it possible for the team to realize the project and share the experience with the AfrikaBurn community. Woza Azania created opportunities for connection, creativity, and cultural expression while demonstrating the resilience and adaptability of collaborative art-making in the unique Tankwa environment.
Chapel: I Wanna Be a Rainbow With You
Monique Fagan
Monique ran a workshop with Projekt Ubuntu Facilitators and the Young ambassadors, developing life-size templates that enabled the group to collectively produce the first panel of the proposed artwork. At the beginning of 2026, participants graduated from the program and gradually reduced in number as employment and relocation shifted availability, eventually consolidating to a core group, including Wunda Quluba, whose technical skill and design complexity became central to the work. Additional contributions were made through collaborations with makers from Ocean View and Masi Creative Hub, alongside an "Each One Teach One" workshop led by Wunda with two volunteers from Projekt Ubuntu. As organizational capacity shifted, production continued in smaller, distributed cycles, with planned parent involvement deferred until after AfrikaBurn, where the work was successfully presented through participatory activation. Installation in Masi has been paused due to local consultation tensions around the proposed site, and the project is currently being repositioned for an alternative site, with new commissions emerging from the process. Despite the challenging process, the project was deeply rewarding, fostering meaningful connections and nurturing remarkable new talent.
Light as Air
Brad Baard
Light as Air took shape as a lean sculptural presence on the Tankwa landscape: minimal in structure, gentle and flowing in the breeze, or quiet and still. Its pale, semi-transparent fabric panels and restrained aesthetic offered a quieter presence than many works on site, creating a calm dialogue with the landscape and those who encountered it.
During the day, participants stood beneath it, reached towards the suspended fabric, moved quietly through it, sat or lay nearby, or paused to photograph it. The work never became crowded or boisterous, instead maintaining a sense of calm and spaciousness. Several participants later described it as among their favourite artworks of the event, with one commenting that it was “peace personified”.
One of the most rewarding outcomes was discovering how naturally the work sat within the landscape. While the minimal aesthetic and softness distinguished it from much of the surrounding art, the structure itself felt surprisingly familiar within the Tankwa environment. Referencing forms such as telephone poles, it drew on a visual language already present in our wide South African landscapes, creating a sense of belonging that was stronger than I had anticipated.
Projection transformed the work after dark, with imagery of clouds, rippling water, sand, abstract patterns and botanical subjects proving particularly effective across the suspended fabric. Multiple layers and planes fragmented and recombined the imagery in unexpected ways. Visitors were often surprised by the transformation, with one participant remarking, “Now I get it,” capturing the way the nighttime projection offered a second layer of meaning and experience. While power supply and scheduling challenges limited projection opportunities, the sessions that did take place revealed the work's capacity to shift between distinct daytime and nighttime experiences, adding a layer of engagement and meaning.
Burning Man 2025
Uno Nuevo Camino
Standing sculptures of a child and parent in space suits walking through the playa, signifying deportation of immigrants to the Moon. The child is determined to show the parent the future of humanity needs to go another direction. The parent carries his hometown in his backpack.
The Moonlight Library
The Moonlight Library is where the Entity stores the thousands of stories she’s been collecting, appearing to us humans in book form.These books, weathered yet resilient, embody the truths of their narrators and remind us that while our covers may appear different, our narratives are universal.
Riding the Thermals
Riding the Thermals deals with humanity's primal discovery of using fire as technology and burning carbon with intention.
It depicts a Redtail Hawk mounted atop a pole with a slight bend. The pole sits in the center of a firepit and uses the thermal energy to make the Hawk circle high above the Playa
Whirl of Art
A communal project consisting of 5 kinetic sculptures, designed & built by TX burner communities of Houston, Dallas / Fort Worth, Austin, San Antonio & Corpus Christi, atop decorated mini art galleries showcasing smaller works of burner artists, with sculptures' motion powered by a merry-go-round.
Afrikaburn 2025
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Sun Catcher - The Birth Of Song
Sun Catcher - The Birth of Song is an immersive art installation and sound stage powered entirely by solar energy. Featuring a 3-meter dreamcatcher-inspired "Sun" framed by a wave-like structure, it represents the moment when the first conscious sound emerged on Earth. This inclusive platform will welcome a diverse range of sound artists, fostering community, sustainability, and creative expression while enriching Afrikaburn’s soundscape.
Conduit ll
This work is about human connection and the transitions we go through in life. It is about moments and rites of passage and acknowledging these as communities who have moved away from traditional ritualised ceremonies around them. The works are therefore human figures.
Some figures made of resin that cast light shadows and are lit at night. These will have a gentle fire element the utilizes velted steel wool. There will also be some made of solid wood and surrounded in a woven wood seed pod framework that will burn to allow figure within to be completed through the burning process. This process is inspired by the Japanese methods of preserving wood through burning. Volunteers will be welcomed to help use bees wax to complete the final wooden forms. Lastly, there will columns of sand that will erode over the time of the festival, hopefully into hourglass forms before disintegrating further and revealing clay forms within.
Kgosigadi, the Village
Kgosigadi, the Village is a majestic 8-meter tall queenly structure adorned with woven garments of natural textures, extending outwards to “embrace” the smaller structures that represent village life. This physical structure embodies the central, queenly figure of Kgosigadi (translation - queen in tswana), whose garment flows outward to symbolize her reach and protection over her people, fostering unity, tradition, and connectivity in a profound visual narrative.
Kgosigadi, the Village is a tale of community, connection, and guardianship. This queen figure embodies protection, wisdom, and guidance for the village, symbolized through a tactile, interactive experience where the community can feel “wrapped” in the queen’s care.
Credits to Rob Richards
Hábitat
Hábitat: the place where organisms live.
The goal is to show the beauty of coexistence and community through a sculpture thats feels like its a living organism that breaths and thrives when whatever's living inside can live together at peace. A digital landscape made out of hundreds of homes as pixel boxes morphing into an organic shaped apartment building. Imagine if humans lived in a beehive or like what a city looks like from a plane. Every window and door throughout the sculpture is lit like a pixel to create graphics and patterns.
Credits to Kyle Stewart
Echoes of the Heart
"Echoes of the Heart" is a biomorphic human heart, containing a “neural network” of 100 acoustic LED fibers. It collects and plays back heartfelt audio recordings from the community, symbolic of the memories of pain, grief, trauma, and love that our hearts carry throughout the courses of our lives.
The human heart is made up of a collection of cells very similar to the brain, and contains its own “neural network,” that functions autonomously; this highly sophisticated “heart brain” actually stores its own memories, independently of the cerebellum. In cases of trauma, these memories can be stored in BOTH places, causing continued symptoms that can last for years; even after receiving cognitive therapy.
Credits to Amanda Seymour
Fable Bound
Viking (v): to go on a sea voyage.
Fable Bound is a 20-foot iconic Viking longship and immersive experience created to honor the importance of our individual and collective storytelling. The ship itself is created out of reclaimed materials and sways as if sailing on the ocean. Through the lens of history and Norse mythology, Fable Bound explores the power in the stories we all tell and create. Whether you find yourself riding in the calm seas or Thor’s stormy weather, it is an opportunity for voyagers to answer the call to adventure. Embarking on a hero’s journey transcends time and space. What one may discover along the way, either by sea or within themselves, only the Gods know!
Credits to Jamie Joyce
Planetary Playground
A tug pulls you in–Planetary Playground has you in its orbit! Swirling in, you glide past a twinkling gateway that encloses the system. Stars fading behind, a Jovian (Jupiter) system looms above. Coming in for landing! Seated on a glowing moon, freely bounce around the gas giant and four satellites. Planetary Playground features an inflatable Jupiter planet, 4 inflatable Galilean moons, 12 moon-painted rideable bounce balls, 7 inflatable asteroid seats, and a 52 ft. diameter perimeter net fence with LEDs.
Credits to Kidnetick(Mark Rivera)
Live Dangerously, Carefully
In the night it twinkles and glistens, in the day it blazes and shines! What is it? It's a pile of treasures from around the world! Roughly the shape of a conical pyramid, it's 7ft tall / 6ft in diameter, and is absolutely covered with stuff, like: jewels, love letters, multi-lingual books, ship wheel, trophies, totems, poems, coins, etc. The centerpiece is a "painting" (map of the world) thrown into the pile. The map of the world is a golden-framed 50"x30" cut of clear acrylic which I irradiated using a 2.5MeV particle accelerator beam. When you irradiate acrylic with 2+ million volts, electrons get excited and discharge in lightning-bolt patterns (called Lichtenburg Figures) - but I shielded parts of the acrylic with lead, so the controlled discharge created a map of the world. It will be thrown in a pile of treasures collected from dozens of adventurers….perhaps even you!
Credits to Drew Roos
Prometheus
Prometheus is a piece of surreal "larger than life" burn art that makes a lasting impression on all those who see it. A moth/butterfly frame, wings covered in mesh with full-motion LEDs. An immersive bath of light and colorful patterns/visuals that overwhelms the senses. Creating a "beacon" and congregating place that attracts people from a large radius.
Credits to Neil Carr
Soft Mother
Soft Mother is an interactive felt sculpture of a Mother Goddess, a larger-than-life cross-legged female abstract figure, with geometric patches of colour, that grow over the course of the Burn as people interact with it. Part of the piece also speaks to colonialism, returning something bland and sanitized to that more vibrant, more alive multi-coloured state. A 3D poem to multiculturalism. Coupled with the colour, is the idea of return to Nature. The Tankwa dust settling on the Mother making Her far less pristine - a well-lived Lady. Celebrating Motherhood, created for people to hug the Mother, to sit in Her lap, to take comfort in her.
Credits to Ceduma Qamata
Umwagaji
Umwagaji is a captivating and transforming Sound Bath. These baths aim to explore the depths of African cosmology through the power of sound, bridging art, spirituality, and culture in a profound and immersive way. Skilled musicians and cultural practitioners may play indigenous instruments during the Sound Bath, creating a mesmerizing and evocative soundscape. Indigenous culture's music and song: are central to identity, place and belonging, and are an expression of a unique and continuing tradition. Indigenous music has an important place in the transmission and survival of indigenous cultures. The sound baths will be carried out in a large beautiful African-themed bell tent comfortable for participants to move and lie down in meditation and relaxation.
Credits to Zulu Heru
Farmer The Rigger
Farmer the Rigger is a large, metal African mask. A guardian of the playa and safe space for people of all expressions. This sculpture is a bold representation of black culture and triumph.
Credits to Jamie Joyce
Live Dangerously, Carefully
“Live Dangerously, Carefully” is a lit, acrylic map of the world made of “shock fossils” or “captured lightning,” accentuated by laser engravings. These “shock fossils” are technically called “Lichtenberg Figures” and represent a notoriously lethal form of art-making. Many have perished making them using microwave transformers on wood. This map of Lichtenberg Figures will direct Burners to do the same: the map is quite literally a map of insights, advice, and encouragement to dare greatly - laser etched on the piece to accentuate the luminous glow of lightning captured in acrylic.
Credits to Kirsten Berg
Oneirotica
At the core of this colorful and reflective giant orchid, you will find yourself at a central altar, a cross-pollination station, where the book of "Nectar" awaits you. This book holds questions to stir and express what brings meaning, and joy. (Photo: Scott London)
Credits to Morteza Ansari
Zhina
Zhina was born to honor women, life, and the freedom movement, an uprising deeply rooted in the topic of choice regarding one’s body, particularly hair. The installation invites visitors to go on a journey of discovery in the interconnected pathways to a unified space to reflect, contemplate and share.
Credit for HyperJump goes to Director Daniel Buckland
Skipper/Performer/Musicians: Asanda Rilityana, Noxi Mabuza, Metja Phillipine Ledwaba, Philani Tensso Mhlanga, Crystal Armstrong, Happy Simelane, Lerato Pricilla Sefoloshe, Kyla Davis, Muzi Sidney Trust, Sisonke Yafele, Maude Sandham, Tebogo Elyphus Machaba, Nombasa Allyson Ngoqo, Elliot Oliver, Mncedisi Hadebe, Sinenhlanhla Mgeyi, Philani Nelson Masedi, Ntomboxolo Donyeli, Sinethemba Jaca, Edward Choeu, Luke Buckland and the Memnoc Collective.
HyperJump
Born out of the Swarm Theory training process, a new mode of interactive desert play - night skipping with a ten-meter static LED skipping rope prototype.
Credits to Itumeleng kgobokoe, Gloria Keepeng,
Tlotlo Mmileng
Mmmamosetsanyana
Three pyramids with the Batswana cultural ornaments as the main aesthetic, with Marimba band/ Batswana cultural dancers. The concept is to get tankwa to embrace the batswana culture under the tankwa sun.
Credits to Carmel Ives
Temple Transcendence
The artwork was an embodiment of men and women coming together with mutual respect and building something greater than themselves.