Sonny Bono Salton Sea

I play at the border of California and Mexico, a nebulous artist colony on the edge of the Salton Sea, the largest lake in California. This self-portrait series shot at Bombay Beach includes devastatingly contaminated land, air, and water. Agribusiness, urban “development,” and water tyrannies shape this region through the horrors of human hubris. Speculations claim that the Salton Sea—a man-made lake—contains the world’s largest lithium deposits—which has led to catastrophic lithium mining for “green” technologies (batteries for electric vehicles, etc.). The salt-encrusted remains of former resorts (think Frank Sinatra, Sonny Bono) and second homes of Southern California’s elite mingle with strewn art objects (remnants from Burning Man) and discarded equipment from decades of diverting the Colorado River to support agriculture in the desert and atomic bomb testing. Geothermal energy plants, hot springs RV resorts, date palm Big Ag, miles of revegetation recuperation projects collide with the broken town of Bombay Beach—all sitting atop the San Andreas fault and all an ecotourist hot spot. In Stage 1, rebar & barbed wire scaffolding become the Fashion Mannequins; we, human bodies—naked, masked, flaunting elaborate displays of color, become the decoration—manipulated products that “clothe” the desiccated metal bodies while escaping the wild & domesticated “natural” world—also laden with contradictions. For example, an Alaskan malamute in the desert represents disorienting incongruencies in our modern world.