Milah van Zuilen, an artist and ecologist in training, seeks to bridge the disciplines of art and ecology. Her practice is rooted in fieldwork, where she collects plant materials such as leaves, carefully drying and transforming them into new compositions. She explores the human urge to understand, categorize, and divide landscapes, with the square as a recurring motif that reflects this structured perspective.

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By studying plant communities, Van Zuilen identifies species that coexist and interact in subtle, often unnoticed ways. She gathers bark and leaves, meticulously cutting them into squares and arranging them into grid-like collages. These structured compositions highlight humanity’s imposition of order onto nature, drawing parallels with the rigid geometries of agricultural monocultures, cartography, and taxonomy.

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For the work Forest Floor, Van Zuilen focused on the fallen leaves of Quercus rubra, Quercus robur, and Fagus sylvatica in the forests surrounding her studio in Lunteren, the Netherlands. Walking through a rectangular section of forest with a systematic approach, she collected leaves in a linear order, preserving this sequence through the drying, cutting, and arranging process. The resulting piece resembles an aerial photograph, but instead of pixels, it is composed of the very material of the forest floor itself. In doing so, Van Zuilen invites viewers to reconsider how we perceive and organize nature, challenging the distinction between organic growth and human-imposed structure.

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milahvanzuilen.com