Heart and Mind, Blood and Nerves
2025From antidotes made out of venom itself, to modern bioprospectors searching for the next billion-dollar drug—snakes and their venom have been used as healing agents for millenia—and cause hundreds of thousands of human deaths each year. Since the beginning, our intertwined relationship with snakes has been marked by a quest for knowledge, whether it's the evolutionary theory that the avoidance of venomous snakes was instrumental in the development of human intelligence itself, or studies that show our fears and preconscious reactions to snakes are uniquely built into our very DNA. Recently, news outlets reported on the promising story of a snake-enthusiast who methodically allowed himself to be bitten by venomous snakes over 200 times in the hope that his own blood would create a universal anti-venom, but he is just one person in a long line who have sought invincibility to venoms through self-immunization. Whether these sacrifices and experiments lead to life-saving drugs or not, scientists all over the world look to the complexity and mystery of venom to unlock new understandings of medicine, immunology, physiology, and pharmacology. True to their many legends, snakes today can still be seen as guardians of ancient knowledge as well as yet-undiscovered secrets, and teach us things about who they and we are. Heart and Mind, Blood and Nerves considers the convergence of myth and medicine, storytelling and science, and caution and curiosity coiled around snakes.
“Guardian,” Cardboard house, homemade paper mache snake, plastic fruit, miniature garden hose, fake grass; “Library, Zoo, Collection,” pharmaceutical jars with labels describing approved drugs derived from snake venoms and areas of current venom-related research; collages using a variety of source materials including illustrations from Gustave Dore’s Bible and other stories, with quotes from a variety of sources inluding “Venomous: how earth's deadliest creatures mastered biochemistry” by Christie Wilcox, “Snake” by Drake Stutsman, and the New York Times.
Installation of "Heart and Mind, Blood and Nerves" at Carnation Contemporary in Portland, OR. All photos by Conner Enloe except where otherwise noted.