A giant monster sculpture reportedly built from roughly six metric tons of recovered plastic was installed on Cox’s Bazar beach and has since been removed — and the internet had a lot to say. The piece, captured in photos that circulated on Reddit’s r/burningman, looked like an effigy-sized statement about waste: a hulking humanoid made from packed bottles and other trash, lit up at night with glowing red eyes and a pile of litter surrounding its base.
Festival people noticed the obvious parallels. On r/burningman the post was titled “out-burnered by Bangladesh,” and commenters leaned into the comparison: the scale and spectacle read like a Burning Man art car or playa effigy, but with a brutal twist — this one was made of the very plastic it was meant to critique.
Reactions ran the gamut:
– Some praised the idea and the scale: a bold, unavoidable way to show how much plastic washes up on a beach.
– Others tore into the practical side — if you make a massive sculpture out of plastic, what do you do with it afterward? The photo shows a ring of loose trash at the base, and several comments called out the irony.
– A few people joked or riffed on the figure’s pose and lighting (expect the usual festival-memeing), while others compared the spectacle to the loud DJ trucks and street installations you see across South Asia.
– Predictably, a portion of the thread suggested setting it on fire — which speaks to how festival culture often romanticizes burning art, but also raises the very real environmental concerns about incinerating plastic.
At its best this viral object landed where good festival art should: between spectacle and message. It grabbed attention, forced people to look at the scale of the plastic problem, and provoked the messy conversations that follow big public artworks — ownership, clean-up, and whether the statement outweighs the footprint.
Whether you called it a modern golem, an out-sized art-burn, or just gross, the sculpture succeeded at getting people talking. For festival folks watching global art and effigy culture, it’s a reminder: scale and shock still work — but so do plans for what comes next. Extra Chill will keep an eye out if there’s an official statement from the creators or local authorities about the installation and removal.