AGONISTES is an ongoing project inspired by the Biblical story of Samson. I initiated the project in 2023 as an endurance performance in which Delilah is a dominatrix-cum-80s fitness instructor who forces me, as Samson, to perform a series of high-intensity exercises, culminating in the cutting of my seven braids by an audience. I carried these braids around with me for two years before re-contextualizing them in a new sculpture and series of self-portraits. My new video work-in-progress, donkey jaw, references Samson’s slaughter of a thousand men with the jawbone of a donkey. I filmed myself from above attempting to mold a donkey’s jaw out of clay while referencing images of Samson engaged in this act of violence. As with the other sculptural elements of the installation, which includes a metal band saw, I’m trying to work with tensions between hard and soft forms as way of transmuting this hyper-masculine aggression and its destructive lust for power.