X (2021) affronted those who wanted to enter Gross’s exhibition. It was an X of large proportions – incisive –, tensioned with climbing ropes from the wall and fixed to the floor, taking over Vermelho’s courtyard. The visitor had to cross the X to enter the exhibition.

X is an interdiction and a sign of the unknown. Carmela took the symbol from the abstract field and brought it to corporeality.

Carmela Gross collected, from newspapers, images of conflicts and confrontations in various countries, as well as images of the fires that consumed Brazilian cultural institutions in this century, to compose the video Luz del Fuego II. The title of the work comes from the artistic name of Dora Vivacqua, who was a Brazilian dancer, naturist, actress and feminist who lived

FONTE LUMINOSA was born from a drawing of a volcano, an eruption of lava, a formless mass that invades all of the viewer’s visual fields, leaking into the surrounding area.

Fire is a force that burns and, tragically, suggests a mirror of the current situation in Brazil, where the government is implementing a suicidal effort that turns the foundations and collective memory of the country into ashes.

The HEADS installation is made up of 226 black drawings – made with paint stains and tears – that induce the viewer to imagine the “portrayed” heads.

The “portraits” are the results of a process that relies on chance in their creation and, therefore, are imagined faces of figures that do not exist.