vytaute zaikauskaite

I have always held a fascination with how nature and plant life grows and can overwhelm the landscape to create a new environment. People leave their unmistakable mark on the world by overtaking an area and building their towns and cities upon it, but there is something beautiful in the way these places once abandoned become the sites for nature to step back in to reclaim these lands.

In this body of work I explore differing landscapes and how they are abandoned in the first place, whether it be a boomtown that has lost its function resulting in the residents moving on, or a town abandoned due to war and in extreme cases even the likes of radiation poisoning in an area.

There is a sense of calm and stillness that encompasses these landscapes when the process of reclaiming begins. When nature reclaims and crawls over our intrusion it tends to soften the area, creating its own environment that is full of new life in its own way. It is the stillness of the land that draws me in, once busy streets overrun by wild weeds, buildings that once stood tall now crumbling with vegetation rising through the cracks as natural light sneaks in through fractures in the walls and ceilings.