The Second Head of Hercules: Art and Resistance Through Four Years of Upheaval

In 2020, we thought we had cut the head off Hercules, and it turned out he had a second one. Donald Trump, the former President, beat the sitting Vice President, Kamala Harris. "What happened? Whose fault is this? How the fuck did we get here in the past four years?" These are all fair questions that the American electorate is asking themselves and each other. We, the Assembly artists at Recess, were reflecting on these questions in the summer before the election, prompted after meeting Session Artist Onyedika Chuke at his apartment project space, aptly named Storage APT. This was not the large gallery that we had seen through pictures, which housed the severed head of Hercules and the chained feet of Hermes. This was an intimate space, somehow only growing more intimate when you come into contact with the series of paintings and pictures that were on view during the meeting. Some small, some medium, some life-sized, depicting all kinds of couples and throuples. It made for interesting peripheral images to have while my fellow artists and I discussed the events that have happened in the last four years that brought us here together. Although we would observe the parallels between 2024 and 2020 on the surface, we would also take a full dive into the history that had brought us as far as we’ve come despite the impending resurrection of the headless Hercules.

We brought more than our bodies and minds to Onyedika’s space; we also contributed pictures, music, memes, and sentiments from four years ago. We all had our own stories to tell on this front. So we wrote about our various experiences, focusing on various aspects of that year and the seemingly looming and overarching theme of the pandemic. The novel coronavirus, COVID-19, is running rampant all over the world. Various “lockdowns” began and with that, isolation. The mandated time to ourselves worked out in my favor. Sure, I lost my job. However, I had little love for it anyway. Consequently, I received extended and enhanced unemployment benefits. And so, I used my newfound disposable income for instruments, both physical and digital, producing more music than I ever had, of a greater quality than ever before. And all, of course, in the confines of my room. We had demanded responsibility from our government and exposed the fact that they had the resources to extend the social safety net and, in fact, always had.

In a strange irony, I would make significantly more income than I had ever had, as many of my fellow working-class Americans would attest. We had been underpaid for so long, after all.

In the same year, we were discussing George Floyd, who was murdered by a Minneapolis police officer, Derek Chauvin, by choking him with a knee for minutes on end despite the pleas and warnings from bystanders and the victim himself. This unnecessary and unjustified act and the lack of subsequent accountability pushed many of us outside towards activism despite our various cities and localities enforcing curfews based on the notion of peace and public health. I was one of them. I had gotten more politically active than ever, not just monitoring the news but protesting on the streets of New York. 2020 was a major election year, meaning our calls for justice seemed to hold more political weight. I saw Trump as the definition of the problems in America. Four years ago, he lost, and Chauvin went through the judicial process and, as a result, was sentenced to twenty years in prison. My meme representation of these was a blue Georgia. The memory has turned bitter since, but at least it was fun. That is, until fairly recently. Looming oligarchy and fascism versus liberal passivity and complacency–the choice was much simpler before. But after nearly a year into the genocide in Gaza, my ability to be positive about the prospect of another four years of Democratic rule has waned. The threat of liberal passivity and naked fascism is no longer theoretical. It’s real. These reflections would lead us to the next step, the sketching phase, and for this one, we would meet weeks later at the Assembly Headquarters.

Not only was this a continuation of a longer discussion, but this would also be the beginning of a collaborative gallery between us Assembly members and Onyedika in the Assembly X Session space. He brought in pieces from his Forever Museum Archive, and in turn, we would create sculptures based on the writings of our fellow Assembly members. I was lucky to have been partnered with someone who had very similar experiences to me. Her 2020 was additionally emphasized by an awakening in photography. I imagined and drew her in a birdcage made of photographic film, one eye looking idly down at a book and the other a lens pointed at the world outside of herself. And she would draw me with a guitar on my back, ever-growing hair, and large, wide eyes. It represented a lot of who I am to this day, and so it made me wonder how much of my own identity I had built from these times.

Our large group meetings would move into the dedicated Session space itself, amongst Onyedika’s works, which were made immediately before and during the 2020-2024 period we were collectively examining. One day, the space sat in darkness, parallel projectors playing videos. One was an edited clip from "American History X," in which the victim of violence was digitally erased from view. For those who had seen the movie, seeing such violence became a subversion of their expectations. And for those who had not, it was a video of a large child irrationally and smugly stomping on the air. This would be the first tool in shaping the discussion. Onyedika would facilitate the exploration of the question, "What is white angst?" He considered it heavily in 2020 and is now considering it again in 2024. Even our elections would prove to be just a regulation of these fears. As the Overton window, the parameters of our political discourse, have moved right on every issue, and the truth has become more apparent. Unlike the anxieties of white supremacy, the anxieties of our various intersecting communities do not start wars, nor do they seem to have the power to end them. Because in their angst, our grievances are reflected in different lights. Black protests become riots. White riots become “don't tread on me.”

This was undercut by a second video originally televised in 1982, a Ronald and Nancy Reagan address declaring the war on drugs. Ronald and Nancy Reagan are two people who are objectively crazy. This is what I thought when I saw their strangely pale faces projected on our wall. If one of us was unfamiliar with the announcement, we were familiar with the results, some of us by education and others with direct or indirect confrontation with the restrictive and unfair laws that followed the declaration. Aside from this policy, others and I are critical of his foolish “Reaganomics.” In the long run, these policies led to the passive neoliberal order that contributed to economic inequality and degradation. On top of him being a severely corrupt, unaccounted-for, warhawk celebrity president, I could only agree with Mark Twain when he said, "History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme." Just to soon learn the uncomfortable truth is that exact rhymes do, in fact, exist.

Had we advanced in four years? More than anything, I can say we had community, in contrast to during the pandemic. Over the past two years, we were fortunate to find ourselves in Recess’s artist ecosystem. I performed and shared my music and was writing more than I ever had. I enrolled in college once again after thinking I could and would never return. And this time, I had a much more fulfilling job. My paired partner in this project was expanding beyond photography and into magazine-making. We had all grown more artful, skillful, and conscious of our community members. And in this, many of us continued our activism and work in the community. Historical protest had once again surged, this time not because of state violence domestically, but state violence across the seas. The genocide in Gaza had been, and as of this writing, still rages on with little justice, solutions, or human rights. Our presidential elections would give a change in policy regarding Gaza and the historical rhyming, same candidates, the same threats. White angst had reared its head once again, as it always seems to do. Maybe our visions of the world have not come true, but perhaps we could make something of our visions for ourselves.

Thus, the sculpting began, and Onyedika directed us to bring our sketches to form. We would be using two new techniques. First, using a slab of clay, we would either add clay or carve into the clay to form our partners' three-dimensional portraits to be presented alongside Onyedika’s pieces. It turned into an intimate process. Not only were we staring back at our partner's face for tens of minutes on end, but the whole time we were carving and shaping each other's faces with our hands and small tools. But beyond that, we further discussed our lives four years ago, making me want to accurately reflect her feelings on the time she had. It became less of a judgment I have of 2020 and more of curiosity about each other's values and how we think we've grown since then. My partner had grown, so I embarked on the struggle to capture her past in a squarish gray, clay slab. And how far had I come? Was I the musician I wanted to be? The writer? The advocate and family I always wanted to be to the ones I loved? No, not yet, but I changed. “I’m stronger,” or so we tell ourselves.

We opened the space for viewing soon after, bringing the conversation to our wider community. The session space now showcased things I had previously only seen in slideshows -the chained feet of Hermes, surrounded by large femur bones of giants. The feet stood on a sky made of glass, glass from the protest of 2020, in the middle of it all, a steel snake, an Ouroboros, eating itself. In the corner, the severed head of Hercules, a god and worshipped agent of violence, masculinity, and Western chauvinism. His face is dumb, shocked, and pathetic in an unlit corner, watching. And in the spotlight and all along the walls are the faces of myself and all my fellow artists—some faces of clay, and some of lead and paper. We told our stories and shared our memes in the hopes that we had somehow captured the beauty within each other's journey. My hands and sculpture would come up short of my sketches of her and even shorter when it comes to the journey my partner took.

2024 has come and gone. It looked a lot like 2020 until it ended more like 2016. So what do you do when the weak Hercules grows a second head, and the fight continues? A fight that seems futile when the last victory only leads to an even greater fight. On top of that, all that you wanted to protect is already being destroyed. The messenger, our representative, has lost its wings, locked behind traditional ideas of civility and decorum. We are only a drop, a single face in a falling sky, but enough rain can sculpt a mountain just as we can remove the head from Hercules once again.