Chapter 9 · 8 years · Tomorrow Today · 9:15 & E

2025

Blue Bull

Blue Bull, three art projects and 215 people: the most epic year in Kurenivka's history.

The year at a glance. Tap a moment to read its part of the story.

215

people in camp, the biggest Kurenivka ever

3

art projects on the playa with the camp

1

two-story art car

The dream

A painting that drives

After 2024 several people came to Yaro and said: we love what you do, we want to back the next one. That was enough to try a long-held dream, an art car. It would be hard and expensive, so it had to be a shared cause. A small circle of founders came together to make it real.

The art car would be a figure by Maria Prymachenko. Mitya Zinoviev, whose team had welded the Hedgehog Temple’s frame, doubted the rights could be secured. Yaro wrote to the Prymachenko foundation, and they said yes, becoming partners in the project. Out of a handful of figures one was obvious: the Blue Bull, her best-known beast, psychedelic blue, like a blue fur coat in the desert. Artist Rostyslav Dudchenko brought it to life, and Mitya’s team built it.

Blue Bull →

First ride

Total awe

The first time Blue Bull rolled across the playa, everyone turned around, filmed it and shouted. People were in total awe.

It was the biggest Kurenivka ever: 215 people, a stage on the Bull and performances by Benny Benassi, Ira8Kays, Alina Pash and Geizweirdo.

Vopli Vidopliassova were due to play an hour of Ukrainian music on the Bull. The band made it to the edge of the playa, but rain had closed the gates, and they were not let in.

On the very first day the biggest dust storm in the event’s history hit the playa. It tore through Kurenivka’s tents and shade, but the Bull survived: the team ran ropes and held it through the whole storm, watching the tail most of all. The art car’s journey from Kyiv to the desert had taken almost two months.

Art of the year · Honorarium

Merman

Merman, by artist Andrii Krapyvchenko and engineer Oleksii Tronchuk, is a twelve-metre swimmer rising out of the playa. Burning Man selected it for an Honorarium in 2020, and then the pandemic and the war kept it from the desert for five years.

In 2025 its team in Kyiv still couldn’t travel, so the Kurenivka Build Crew assembled Merman for them, with Mitya Zinoviev leading construction and logistics. He survived the biggest dust storm in the event’s history without a scratch.

The Merman page →

Art of the year · Mykola Kabluka

Point of Unity

Point of Unity, by Ukrainian light artist Mykola Kabluka, is a mirrored ring between two discs: a mirror almost seven metres across above, another one underfoot, and people sitting in between, with the sky around them.

It became the unofficial chapel of 2025, with more than twenty weddings held inside it.

The Point of Unity page →

Art of the year · Honorarium

Lightning Tower

Lightning Tower, by Italian artist Pepemaniak, Federico Ceruso from Rome, is a ten-metre totem of hand-blown neon cut by jagged lines of lightning, visible from far across the playa at night. Burning Man chose it as one of 76 Honoraria that year: the only one from Italy, and one of seven by artists showing at the festival for the first time.

He conceived it as a modern tribal totem to gather around, the way people once gathered around fire, and during the week it hosted performances and shared rituals. It was built and supported from inside Kurenivka, by a strong Italian crew in a camp of 21 nationalities.

The Lightning Tower page →

Reboot · 9:15 & E

The Sound Healing Lounge

That year the camp called itself Kurenivka: Reboot, and its heart was the Sound Healing Lounge, open to the street from morning to evening. Sound healing journeys, tea ceremonies with six collections of Carpathian herbal teas brought from Ukraine, yoga, voice work, meditation, ecstatic dance and a piano. Facilitators and musicians from different countries held the space together.

Kurenivka had become truly international: 215 people from 21 countries, and some 4,000 gallons of water to keep them going. Then the biggest storm in the history of Burning Man destroyed the lounge in minutes. The camp glued, repaired and raised the stretch tent again, piece by piece, and that is where Benny Benassi played his night.

The tea lounge was produced by Marina Malyarenko, Dmytro Pavlenko, Max Veremeyenko and Liza Kormilets.

The rain night

Benny Benassi in the lounge

One night a party on the Bull was washed out by rain. The Bull stayed parked on the playa, the camp walked back through the puddles, and everyone hid in their RVs. On the way Yaro ran into Benny Benassi: let’s play in the lounge.

Yaro, Mamay and Pasha hauled speakers through the rain into the rebuilt lounge, the camp gathered, the neighbours came, and Benny played the whole night while it poured.

It was not announced and not documented. Only the people inside that tent know how it felt.

Art of 2025

The art pages

In their words

2025, as people told it

Track of the year

Ro Rousseau on Blue Bull, Burning Man 2025.

Built by

The 2025 build crew

The people who arrived first and left last.