Mebuyan Vessel - BM22

An Immersive, warping, spherical architectural installation, Mebuyan Vessel will take center stage as one of the largest installations on playa at Burning Man 2022, spanning 24’ (h) x 35’ (l) x 27’ (w).

We are currently short of $26,000 from our initial budget, due to unforeseen complications and a donor's last-minute defection, and we need your help to make this installation happen!

The donations are tax-deductible and will benefit a 501(c)3 foundation supporting the project.

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About Mebuyan Vessel

Mebuyan Vessel is a large-scale architectural interactive installation. Designed to encourage community and interactivity, this creative imagination of "waking dreams" stitches together several spheres that allow people to move throughout the structure's different oneiric universes.

Suspended approximately 10 feet above the ground, Mebuyan will look like a colony of interconnected bubbles of varying sizes. This network of spherical structures evokes an imaginative, three-dimensional visualization of a vivid dream that visitors experience firsthand.

A bamboo and metal structure will support spheres made of different materials, collected objects and discards, in line with the artist's practice of repurposing materials to take a new meaning and life. Inside, the spheres will be imprinted with cosmic, psychedelic patterns reminiscent of stained glass, transforming each pod into an isolation or meditation room. Consequently, the sculpture will offer different visual experiences externally and internally.

Mebuyan will create an interactive space that permits a variety of engagements in tune with the freedom and needs of Black Rock Citizens. The structure will be a kind of "performative space" allowing visitors to merge with the sculpture: anything from a collective meeting space to an individual site of meditation, prayer, or contemplation. Being both an environment and an architecture, the level of interactivity is flexible and nearly infinite, adaptive to the spontaneous needs of its inhabitants.

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In the words of the artist:

“The title comes from Mebuyan, a goddess from Filipino mythology, specifically the Bagobo mythology, a large indigenous people of southern Mindanao, Philippines.

She’s a goddess of life and death, of the afterlife, traditionally represented as a woman living underground, sitting on a wooden mortar, with breasts covering her entire body. She is said to be nourishing the dead spirits of children in the afterlife, so that they can grow up and continue on their journey to adulthood."

"It's my hope that the Mebuyan Vessel becomes a nourishing, transformative, and cosmic place for citizens of Black Rock City for their personal and collective growth.”

“The idea is that each sphere represents a different world: people can access them and transit to the next via bridgeways. Some of the spheres are large enough to accommodate a small group of people, some just one person."

"As a visitor, you will be journeying through very different experiences defined by lighting, texture, patterns, so that each sphere will have its distinct physical quality. The ensemble evokes the idea of a compact solar system of unique oneiric dimensions.”

About Leeroy New

Leeroy (Manila, b. 1986) is one of the most prolific and recognized contemporary artists from Southeast Asia. His works have been most recently featured at the Sydney Biennale (’22), Somerset House (London, ’22), Hawaii Triennial (’22), Palais the Tokyo (Paris, ’19), among others. Leeroy also designed the wearable sculpture donned by Lady Gaga on Marry the Night’s cover.

With his ongoing series Aliens of Manila, the artist deals with themes of immigration and integration of Philippine service workers abroad, playing on the terminology "alien" still in use in immigration law while ironically referencing the series Humans of NY. The materials composing these anthropomorphic figures (sponges, strainers, funnels, dusters, fly swatters) are a testament to the life of service workers, and are recycled and repurposed to take on a completely new life.

Over the course of a 20-year creative career, New has built more than 40 immersive and interactive installations, of which 15 were of dimensions comparable or larger than the proposed project.

These were built often in very inhospitable settings, including Chrysalis, a 40’ (h) x 60’ (w) bamboo spaceship-like structure in the sand dune desert of Paoay, Philippines, which safely hosted and supported 50+ people, and Rhizome Colony, an immersive extension of an island at Wonderfruit Festival that could support a large number of visitors passing through it daily.