• To ingest part of Dieffenbachia Picta or Dumbcane as it is commonly known, will lead to paralysis of the mouth, lips, and tongue, causing temporary muteness.
• The panic at being struck dumb is constricted to a mere mechanical clatter in your head.
• Try not to ask yourself ‘When will this end?’
• The placement of the houseplant designates a zone of potential silence, a selected frame of domestic insistence.
• It is an icon of both latent material, chemical effect and the dissolution of language.
• Its effect is a physiological, existential swelling.
• Dumb paralysis becomes immobility becomes time passing, boredom or durational obstinacy.
• Mid-afternoon, ‘downtime’, French windows.
• Now turn away.

Juliette Blightman, Richard Birkett

a work of Blightman

a work of Richard Birkett