Wilding Cran Gallery is pleased to present Arrábida, a new series of works by Fran Siegel exploring the intersections of memory, and place embedded within the botanical visual language of Portuguese azulejo tiles. 

Developed during a Fulbright fellowship based in and around Lisbon, Ovar, and Arrábida Natural Park, Siegel’s research examines the botanical motifs of azulejos, the painted ceramic tiles that have shaped Portuguese architectural surfaces since the 16th century. Focusing on the botanical iconography of these painted ceramic tiles, the project examines how stylized vegetal forms both reflect and abstract local flora, while carrying histories shaped by trade, religion, and cycles of destruction and renewal. Shaped by principles of ornamentation and geometry, these tiles serve as vessels of cultural transmission and identity formation, foregrounding the relationship between living plant ecologies and built environments.

At the core of Arrábida is the concept of a fachada transparente—an azulejo aesthetic in which tile patterns extend perception beyond the physical façade, creating a sense of spatial permeability. Siegel activates this idea through layered processes of drawing, cyanotype, painting, shadow projection, translucency, and collage, constructing what she describes as a practice of visual cartography. Within Fig Thistle, 2025, layers of direct plant impressions and hand-drawn geometries pulse in blues and greens punctuated with white, allowing organic forms to bleed into and disrupt their geometric structures. This interplay foregrounds the historical relationship between botanical imagery and geometric order, alongside classificatory systems—scientific, decorative, and symbolic—that have shaped how the natural world is observed, represented, and claimed.

Across the exhibition, the series of multi-panel works unfolds as diptychs, triptychs, and six-part compositions, emphasizing fragmentation and recombination as methods of meaning-making, with each segment functioning both independently and as part of a larger system. Siegel’s process integrates extensive field documentation: walking and mapping Lisbon’s streets to record tile facades, cataloguing recurring patterns, studying restoration techniques alongside local artisans, and exploring botanical gardens as historic sites of imperial power, where scientific classification developed in tandem with colonial expansion and the circulation of plant life across continents. In Siegel’s modular installation Jardim Ajuda, 2026, named for an imperial botanical garden, individual tile elements function as receivers, while a draped cyanotype on fabric traces the artist’s pathways through the city, generating a cartographic study of cultural motifs embedded within the urban landscape. 

Through drawing as a method of anthropological study, Arrábida positions azulejo tiles as sites of inquiry, revealing the dense interrelations between cultural exchange, geographic identity, and imperial taxonomies of the natural world—systems through which identities are constructed, contested, and transmitted across time and territory. In Siegel’s work, the tile becomes an allegorical device: a fig leaf, a thistle, a sprig of holly come to reflect a broader matrix of spatialized identity, ancestral memory, and exchange.

Fran Siegel's exhibition Arrábida coincides with the May 8, 2026, opening of her commissioned permanent public installation at the Wilshire/La Brea Metro station in Los Angeles. In a continued exploration of the iconographies and architectures of urban identity, the tiled work is part of the D Line Subway Extension Project, a site-specific initiative spanning seven new Metro stations.