Burning Man artist Gazelle Dasti, originally from Tehran, Iran’s capital city, has a message of unity.
But Dasti’s Iran is not the Iran of 2026 news photos. It is the Iran of everyday people.
“I’m on a mission,” she said, sitting at her desk. A whiteboard behind her was filled with geometry and diagrams. A sleek, serene, 3-D-printed head—colorless yet regal in a tall crown—sat on the table beside her. “I see myself on a very serious mission to put my culture out there in the proper way. … What you can see in media is Third World, Muslim extremists and all of that. But we are way beyond that. That’s what I’m trying to show.”
In Iran, Dasti earned a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering and a master’s in technology management. Afterward, looking for an artistic outlet while on a backpacking trip, she shot selfies and used an iPad to alter them. Her work from that era features psychedelic faces that represent various mental-health conditions and conjure gods and goddesses.
She wrote a book, but she did not get a publishing deal, so instead, she posted her prose a paragraph at a time, along with her images, on Instagram.
“That was the way I built up my portfolio as an artist,” Dasti said.
She sold some of her digital paintings as NFTs and earned enough to move abroad. In 2022, she got a full scholarship to Bowling Green State University in Ohio, where she earned a master’s degree in computer arts.
For her thesis project, in 2024, she wanted to use three separate technologies—audio, guided particle systems (used in video game design and motion graphics) and projection mapping. For the projection mapping, she needed a surface on which to project her moving images. She came across some aluminum mesh.
“It looked like a brain,” she said. That would make the perfect surface—but she would need a head to hold the brain.
“I had never, never built anything with my hands,” she said. “I (didn’t) know welding or anything.”
Within a month, Dasti’s professor, Michael Arrigo, had taught her how to weld. She built an angular, metal head.
Back in Tehran, years before, Dasti and her friends used to watch videos of Burning Man on YouTube.
“Because of the political restrictions, even imagining getting a U.S. visa and one day attending Burning Man felt almost impossible,” she said.
Once she was in the U.S. and it became a real possibility, she told herself, “I’m going to build something, and I’m going to take it to Burning Man.” Once she saw the projection project completed, she was determined to get it to the playa.
Another professor introduced her to Gary Gunderson, a kinetic sculptor in Seattle. (Longtime local art fans might remember his shiny structure with bike wheels and bells that was, in 2015, among the temporary pieces displayed on the grounds of the Lear Theater here in Reno.)
“He was a Burner and Burning Man artist for 14 years,” said. Dasti. “I convinced him—two hours on the phone—‘let me change your art in a way that I add my thesis project to it, so I can be an artist at Burning Man.’ And he said OK.”
Said Gunderson: “I did caution her that it’s probably best to go once to Burning Man, get a feel for the place and then come back the next year with a project. But that’s not how it went down.”
Dasti got her project to the playa two months after her thesis presentation.
Playa premiere
While it’s typical for Burning Man art projects to require large teams to design, transport and install, Gunderson is the sort of artist who prefers to design something that he can control and execute, start to finish, by himself. The undiluted limelight of solo work appeals to him. After the phone call with Dasti, though, he decided he’d do things differently—this one time.
“She has a very wonderful, infectious personality, and it was an opportunity to maybe pay it forward,” Gunderson said. “I’ve been lead artist on a couple things in years past, and that’s the name that goes on there and gets all the attention. But it’s nice to be able to help someone else start.”
He ceded the top billing, and he and Dasti began collaborating, 2,300 miles apart—him in Seattle, her in Ohio—to build a piece with her name on it called “NeuroLumina.”
Gunderson had a large, spare tripod-shaped structure from a previous art project. He’s a mechanical engineer, so he was sure it would stand up to the dust, wind and weight requirements that playa art demands. The newly formed duo designed a steel frame to place atop the tripod, from which to suspend the gray mesh brain. The frame also needed to safely hold the electronics that would project undulating abstractions straight up onto the brain.
It wasn’t until Dasti was on the playa that she realized how harsh the desert—with its fierce winds and ubiquitous, powdery dust—can be on electronics. (And while that year, 2024, was not the year of the epic mudslides, it did also rain a bit as artists were installing.)
“That’s just what comes from not having had real dress rehearsals, to find out what you missed,” said Gunderson. “There were some stressful times there, on that first day of setting it up. … No matter what you plan for, there’s always some unknown. That’s just the way of things. It was a very successful project that we pulled it off. It was not as perfect as she wanted it, but we took it there; it survived; it operated. For her first time there, it was a giant leap for mankind.”
Dasti’s foot was firmly in the door of the Burning Man art world.
Nevada bound
In 2025, she built another Burning Man piece, “NewClear Neural,” an 18-foot-tall head with lights that represent regions of the brain and respond to nearby sounds. She likes to integrate playground elements into her large sculptures, and inside this one was a spinning teacup, large enough to hold an adult.
“It was an element that makes you touch your inner child,” Dasti said.
After that piece left the playa, the next phase of Dasti’s life unfolded in a rush. She explained: “I came back home after decompression, and I told my husband, ‘Look, we are too far. We better go get close.’”
Two weeks later, they moved to Reno. Two days after that, she got a studio space at The Generator, the bustling makerspace in Sparks.
This summer, she’s been working on her largest project yet, a 23-foot-tall version of the 3D-printed model on her desk, called “Zarvan.”
Zarvan, Dasti said, is “the first God in Persian history. It’s a God of time. It’s a deity of boundless time.”
Her rendition of this god is an elegant bust whose face projects Buddha-level composure. It’s made of triangles of glittery, turquoise-colored, powder-coated polycarbonate steel. He wears a crown that looks like stained glass. (It’s impact-resistant Plexi, as Dasti is no longer a stranger to the threat of wear and tear that playa artists must thwart.) Muralist (and RN&R Best of Northern Nevada artist!) Nathaniel Benjamin—one of many locals who have volunteered on the project this summer—has been painting elaborate, Persian floral motifs on the exterior of “Zarvan.”
The piece has two interactive elements. A periscope lets viewers peer out, as if from the god’s eyes, which are set at a height more than twice that of most humans. His long, golden earrings with bell-shaped bottoms serve as speakers. They’re connected by tubes to an orifice into which people can speak. “This creates an unexpected private exchange within a public environment. Strangers become participants in a shared moment,” according to Dasti’s website.
Zarvan is meant to convey a message of unity. It’s not something that Dasti would exhibit in Iran right now, where religious minorities have long been persecuted, and displaying spiritual iconography outside of the norm is risky. (Zurvanism, by the way, is an ancient religion no longer practiced in Iran.)
“I’d rather show it abroad, so that I have this freedom of speech,” she said.
There’s another reason that working in the U.S. is best: She’s seen women in Iran discouraged from following their dreams, and she wants her career abroad to be an example.
“I’m an inspiration for those women out there who think they cannot do it,” she said. “They believe, ‘Oh, I cannot,’ and I just want to show them, ‘You can, it’s just the environment.’”
Gazelle Dasti will present “Zarvan” during the Playa Art Preview, The Generator’s fundraising dinner and art tour, at 6 p.m., Saturday, Aug. 1, at 2450 Oddie Blvd., in Sparks. For tickets ($75 and up) and details, visit www.therenogenerator.com/playaartpreview.
The piece will also be on view at Burning Man, which runs from Sunday, Aug. 30, to Monday, Sept. 7 in the Black Rock Desert north of Gerlach. Dasti plans to speak as part of the roundtable “AI to Installation: Turning Digital Concepts into Buildable Public Art” at the CODA Summit in Santa Fe, N.M., on Thursday, Oct. 1.
To learn more about Dasti’s work or to inquire about volunteering on the Zarvan project, visit gazelledasti.com. For more images, follow @zarvanproject and @gazelledasti on Instagram.