Roda Gigante: Carmela Gross, Lina Bo Bardi, and Objective Form in Brazil

Pilkington Lecture in Art History - Department of Art History and Cultural Practices, University of Manchester.

Co-sponsored with the Whithworth as part of Whitworth Studies.

Roda Gigante: Carmela Gross, Lina Bo Bardi, and Objective Form in Brazil

Gail Day, Professor of Art History and Critical Theory, University of Leeds and 2025-2026 Pilkington Visiting Professor in Art History, The University of Manchester

Abstract

What happens when an artwork that seems to be strongly grounded in one context moves to another? The consensus has long been that the work must be diminished – becoming a mere copy, abstracted from its site, and emptied of its animating content. But what if we ask questions not only of ‘site specificity’ but also of ‘historical specificity’, and if we draw on the critically expanded approaches to the latter? This talk attends to Carmela Gross’ extraordinarily striking, large-scale installation Roda Gigante (Big Wheel), tracing its passage from its first manifestation in 2019 at Porto Alegre’s Farol Santander to its 2004 iteration in Sao Paulo’s SESC Pompeia. Carmela Gross’ aesthetic and political ‘dialogue’ with Lina Bo Bardi, the architect for SESC Pompeia, not only opens fresh perspectives on Roda Gigante but deepens and sharpens its historical charge. Central to the discussion of the social materiality of aesthetic expression are Brazilian debates on ‘objective form’, involving Antonio Candido, Roberto Schwarz and Luiz Renato Martins.

Biography

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

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