Milah van Zuilen at RADIUS CCA
As part of the exhibition Entangled Life
24 September, 2022 until 27 November, 2022
Entangled Life is the third exhibition of the Underland year program, exploring the multispecies entanglements that occur in forest ecosystems through the work of nine artists. Moving from the world wide web to the wood wide web, this exhibition seeks to advocate for a heightened notion of symbiosis, mutualism, reciprocity and interdependence.
Milah van Zuilen describes herself both as a visual artist and a forest ecologist in training. With fieldwork at the core of her practice, she collects organic material—mostly leaves—treats them, and sorts them into grids, making geometrical arrangements. Seen from afar, they resemble air photographs of crop fields. This illusion points to Van Zuilen’s interest in the contradiction between the complexity of nature and the human urge to rationalise and neatly organise it for their own benefit. The square, a shape often used in taxonomy and cartography to organise nature, becomes an instrument of rationalisation. The vast square stretches of land manicured for agricultural exploitation in the Netherlands are a familiar example.
Van Zuilen observes an overlap between how landscapes are scientifically captured and artistically interpreted. In her work, she attempts to critically question the similarities between both actions while dissolving the urge to use nature as a means to strict scientific or artistic ends. In allowing herself to be influenced by how the landscapes she explores are found naturally, her compositions stand as bridging topographical articulations. For Forest floor, Veluwe, the artist conducted fieldwork in the Lunterse Buurtbos, in Lunteren, province of Gelderland. She collected fallen foliage on the forest floor, comprising Quercus rub (northern red oak), Fagus sylvatica (beech), and Quercus robber (common oak).
RADIUS is a center for contemporary art and ecology. Located in the city of Delft and stationed in the pump house and water basin belonging to the Delft water tower, a historical monument and architectural landmark. With five hundred square meters of subterranean exhibition space, their program is dedicated to the intersection of art, science and ecology. The name RADIUS is based on the circular geometry of our exhibition space. In a more poetic sense, the radius of each circle in their program serves to jointly develop a more grounded understanding of our shared living environment.
RADIUS Center for Contemporary Art and Ecology
Kalverbos 20
2611 XW Delft
Tuesday—Sunday: 11 am—5 pm