The Wild Temple of Yam

“Burning Man is a revival of art’s culture-bearing and connective function. It is art that is meant to be touched, handled, played with and moved through in a public arena. It solicits a collaborative response from its audience, even as it encourages collaboration between artists. It deliberately blurs the distinction between audience and art form, professional and amateur, spectator and participant.”

― Larry Harvey, Burning Man: Art on Fire

Creating a reconfigurable circle space for remembrance, meditation, reflection and ceremony

Inspired by the temples of Burning Man, The Wild Temple of Yam, was first built as a tribute to my father who passed away in 2014.

The temple space was designed to be a nondenominational, open and inclusive space for reflection, meditation, remembrance, spirituality and ceremony. It was intended to bring people together and build community by promoting tolerance, diversity, empathy, compassion, connection and belonging. It was a much loved space with a fire in the centre, and was used for a range of activities at Wild Yam, including ceremonies, workshops, a funeral celebration, a wedding, women’s circles, secret men’s business, singing, songwriting and music jams.

The concept was to recreate the original temple, Stonehenge, in a quirky form as Doorhenge. Between each door was a template guardian. Each year, the configuration was slightly different, and the symbolism of the ‘guardians’ changes. I created different sets of temple guardians in response to the Wild Yam theme:

The Temple was a fully immersive, participatory piece that required audience participation. The entrance doors were painted with a mural, inline with the festival theme. The rest of the doors were an open invitation for Temple visitors to create on, with a box of paints and paint brushes left for people to use. Visitors were invited to write or paint on the doors, leave a message, drawing, poem, prayer, tribute or memorial, or simply sit in the space and enjoy it. The atmosphere in the temple changed and came alive as people wrote on the doors and used the space.

Unlike Burning Man temples, it was not burnt at the end of the festival, but was cumulative and built on each year by Yammers. I loved that people enjoyed reading what they had written in previous years and reflect on how they’d grown and changed since then. People often built on their previous messaging or changed it to reflect their current journey. For many regular Yammers, going straight to the temple on arrival became an annual pilgrimage.

The project was a collaboration with my husband Adam, the engineering brains and electronics whiz behind the project. He developed the method for making the doors stand upright in the field safely and created a solar panel and truck battery powered lighting rig to light up the temple at night.

The Wild Temple of Yam installed each year at Wild Yam Festival, Lower Mangrove

  • The Wild Temple of Yam v3, GodYam, 2019
  • The Wild Temple of Yam v2, Yamazon, 2018
  • The Wild Temple of Yam v1, Pirates of the CarribeYam, 2017
  • The Wild Temple of Yam v1, Alice in WonderYam, 2016
  • The Wild Temple of Yam v1, Cirque du Yam, 2015

This is a waste to art project. Materials for the temple were generally sourced for free.

  • 18 x white doors
  • 12 x 44 gallon drums, courtesy of Mosman City Council Children’s Services
  • Screws and powertools
  • 40 x star pickets donated by Yammers
  • 12 x door snakes, used as weights inside the sculptures
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