Picture this: you’re in the middle of Black Rock Desert, and you spot an enormous metal axolotl emerging from the sand. Later that evening, you come back with some friends and the beast has transformed! Suddenly, its gills and tail are glowing in every color imaginable, and you are surrounded by a truly mythical light show.

This is the vision of a massive, luminous sculpture that walked the Nevada desert during Burning Man in 2023.

This enormous, aluminum axolotl stretched more than 25 feet long (7+ meters). In the day, shadow patterns danced across the sand, and citizens of Black Rock were invited to climb around and discover this great beast. Then at night,  gills along the neck and the entire tail lit up, dazzling spectators as the colorful lights ebbed and flowed.

Ricardo Martinez Herrera, or Riikc, is the lead artist on this project. He is a Mexican sculptor who moved to Belgium in 2013 to pursue an art degree, and has been there ever since. Riikc has built large-scale projects in steel, wood, plastic, and sound and light.

In 2015, Riikc was commissioned to build a monumental steel installation called 1715 in the Belgian city of Ath. In 2022, Riikc was invited to the DEFCON conference to present his sculpture “Memento Vivere,” which is a light installation powered by Arduino One technology, similar to the system used in “Axolotl: A Spirit Guide.”

The construction and installation are being supported by Luis Varela Rico, a Las Vegas-based and Mexico-born sculptor. In 2019, Luis was part of the team that built Monumental Mammoth for Burning Man. Luis designed and manufactured the enormous steel skeleton at the heart of this piece. In 2021, Luis was a participant on the Netflix competition show “Metal Shop Masters.”