Objective Form and Carmela Gross’ Roda Gigante: Value, Waste and Weight

Join us for a work in progress seminar with speaker Gail Day, Professor of Art History and Critical Theory in the School of Fine Art, History of Art and Cultural Studies.

What happens when an artwork strongly grounded in one context moves to another? The consensus has long been that the work must be diminished in some way – becoming a mere copy, abstracted, and emptied of its animating content. But what if we ask questions not only of ‘site specificity’ but also of ‘historical specificity’?

The talk attends to Carmela Gross’ striking, large-scale installation Roda Gigante (Big Wheel), tracing its passage from its first exhibition at Porto Alegre’s Farol Santander in 2019 to its reiteration in Sao Paulo’s SESC Pompeia in 2024.

By exploring Gross’ imagined dialogue with architect Lina Bo Bardi and the Brazilian debates about ‘objective form’, might the 2024 iteration deepen Roda Gigante's specificity and charge?

About the speaker

Gail Day is Professor of Art History and Critical Theory at the University of Leeds. Her 2010 book, Dialectical Passions: Negation and Art Theory (Columbia University Press) was shortlisted for the Isaac and Tamara Deutsche Prize. She has just published Amphibious Realities: The Documentary Poetics of Allan Sekula, co-authored with Steve Edwards (Verso, 2025), a 'Best Book of 2025' listing in Library Journal.

More information

This work in progress seminar is hosted by the School of Fine Art, History of Art and Cultural Studies.

It is free to attend and all are welcome.

For more information and to register, please email Mark Thorley at M.Thorley1@leeds.ac.uk.

Image

Carmela Gross, Roda Gigante [Big Wheel], at SESC Pompéia, São Paulo, 2024. Photo: João Nitsche. Courtesy of the artist.