Lineage Through Landscape: Tracing Egun in Brazil by Fran Siegel

July 23 – December 10, 2017

Lineage through Landscape: Tracing Egun in Brazil by Fran Siegel is a multifaceted drawing project developed during the Los Angeles-based artist’s research residency in Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo and the island of Itaparica, a vibrant center of the Afro-Brazilian religion Candomblé. A vast, forty-foot-long, irregular “weaving” made of strips of sun-exposed and patterned fabric crossed by lengths of delicate drawings of sacred plants on translucent drafting film and cyanotypes, the work will wrap around three walls of the Museum’s “Fowler in Focus” Gallery. Finding inspiration in the worship of ancestral spirits, or Egun, in the natural environment associated with Candomblé practices on Itaparica and in the vexed history of colonialism and slavery in Brazil, Siegel’s project can be read as a highly charged landscape of black Brazil, built from fragments that embrace its African roots.

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Lineage through Landscape: Tracing Egun in Brazil by Fran Siegel is organized by the Fowler Museum and curated by Marla C. Berns, Shirley and Ralph Shapiro Director. The exhibition is made possible thanks to a grant from the Philip and Muriel Berman Foundation. Fran Siegel’s research for this project was supported by a Fulbright Social Sciences and Humanities Award and by a residency at the Instituto Sacatar in Bahia, Brazil.

Image: Fran Siegel, Lineage Through Landscape: Tracing Egun in Brazil (Front View), 2016-2017. Mixed media, 144 in x 300 in. © Fran Siegel

Press Release

Lineage through Landscape: Tracing Egun in Brazil by Fran Siegel

Selected Images

Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA is a far-reaching and ambitious exploration of Latin American and Latino art in dialogue with Los Angeles. Supported by grants from the Getty Foundation, Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA takes place from September 2017 through January 2018 at more than 70 cultural institutions across Southern California, from Los Angeles to Palm Springs, and from San Diego to Santa Barbara. Pacific Standard Time is an initiative of the Getty. The presenting sponsor is Bank of America.