Description

Inheritance of Venom

Artist Statement by Dustin Ferguson

A skull, hollow and still. A serpent, coiled and piercing. In black and white, this image strips away distraction and leaves only the stark truth: what remains when harm is allowed to take root.

The snake doesn’t strike in motion—it lingers, entwined, penetrating. This is not the moment of violence, but its aftermath. The long, quiet corrosion of ill intent. The way negativity, once invited, does not simply pass—it embeds, it reshapes, it survives.

“Inheritance of Venom” is a meditation on vulnerability, consequence, and the anatomy of betrayal. It asks: what do we become when we let others define our pain? When we mistake silence for safety? When we carry the venom long after the bite?

This photograph is not just a warning. It’s a reckoning.