Milah van Zuilen | Recipient Young Blood Award 2021

Q&A with Milah van Zuilen – Recipient Ron Mandos Young Blood Award 2021

07.09.21

Best of Graduates 2021 has officially come to an end and the Young Blood Foundation is pleased to share with you that this year’s edition has been a great success! We are grateful and proud of all participating graduates – and of course, our winners. 

Before moving on to the next thing on our calendar, we would like to lay focus on our award winners one last time, and ask them some questions about their past, present, and of course, future: 

Today, we focus on Milah van Zuilen, the winner of the Ron Mandos Young Blood Award 2021. By winning, Van Zuilen her work will be taken into the collection of Museum Voorlinden.  

RMYBF: Congratulations on winning the Ron Mandos Young Blood Award 2021. What does winning this award mean to you?

MvZ: Thank you! Winning the award has been a bit surreal and also incredibly motivating. It showed me that the attention for art that concerns itself with nature is growing. 

RMYBF: Who or what inspired you to become an artist? 

MvZ: As a child, I’ve always been surrounded by musicians and artists. My grandfather was a painter and both my parents are musicians. My mom teaches Indian classical music, so our home was always packed with her students and musicians coming from different parts of the world. Seeing all their forms of creativity made it almost inevitable for me to do something artistic too.  

RMYBF: How is your identity reflected in the works of art that you create?  

MvZ: I don’t see my personal and artistic identity as separate. The things I do for my art, I also do for myself. Being outside, climbing trees, walking, collecting leaves. 
 

RMYBF: What is it that you would like to achieve through your art?  

MvZ: I want to capture and share my experience of spending time outside. The process of simply walking and observing.
 

RMYBF: If you could travel back in time to the first grade of art school, what would you tell your younger self? 

MvZ: I’d tell myself to go to bed earlier.  

RMYBF: Dream BIG, where do you want to be within the next 5 years? 

MvZ: I think I’d like to be where I am right now, geographically speaking. I’m currently in my atelier in the bohemian forest, in the Czech Republic.  

RMYBF: Finish this sentence: what recently graduated artists need in order to survive and become successful is…

MvZ: a topic they would want to research endlessly.