At California’s Salton Sea, where cracked shores meet chemical haze, Lío Mehiel performs a ritual act of resilience in the face of toxicity.

The Salton Sea is not a sea. It’s a lake in the middle of the California Desert. It’s toxic, they say. It’s disappearing. As the water evaporates, dust rises from the surface, creating a haze that obscures the horizon, and making the Salton Sea shore one of the most beautiful places from which to watch the sun set. On a day without wind, the water is still as glass—and both sea and sky merge into one wonderful pastel gradient. 

But when I arrive, I’m met with the smell of sulfur. I’m warned about the dangers of swimming. I go in anyway, and ask Wynne to join me. He wears protective gear. I do not. Once in the water, the mud threatens to swallow us whole, each step labored and slow. I emerge with a hundred tiny cuts, small but deep, all along the bottoms of my feet and up my legs from fishbones and shrapnel. 

They say the sea is toxic. But we made it that way. So I move toward it and submerge myself entirely. I open my eyes to the sting. The sea and I, it turns out, have a lot in common. 

angels of a drowning myth is a performance and installation by artist Lío Mehiel with photographer Wynne Neilly. The piece features a sculpture made by Holly Silius from a cast of Lío’s chest six months after they received top surgery. Lío engages the socialized, emotional body and its ever-changing flesh as a site of research and inspiration. They center collaboration and improvisation in their work, inviting fellow artists to join them within immersive, sometimes precarious scenarios in which the process of making is just as much the work as the final art object. 

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