ART EDITION EXCLUSIVE: ROSA (ROSE) MCGOWAN ON REINVENTION AND RADICAL TRUTH
An exclusive interview by Indira Cesarine for The Untitled Magazine’s ART EDITION 001 “THE ART OF RESISTANCE”
In a jungle on the Yucatán Peninsula, far from red carpets and paparazzi flashbulbs, Rosa—formerly known to the world as Rose McGowan—has quietly reinvented herself. No longer cloaked in the armor of celebrity, she has emerged as a multidisciplinary artist, grounded in nature, committed to authenticity, and determined to dismantle the myths that once defined her.
In a candid and wide-ranging conversation with UNTITLED’s Indira Cesarine, she discusses her journey from whistleblower to contemporary artist, her rejection of cultural programming, and her creative process rooted in emotional truth and radical self-expression. Speaking on themes of healing, rebellion, and reinvention, Rosa offers a powerful meditation on what it means to resist—not through spectacle, but through sincerity.
Best known for her role in igniting a global reckoning in the entertainment industry, Rosa’s legacy defies simplification and simply cannot be reduced to a hashtag or a news cycle. In 2017, Time Magazine recognized McGowan as one of the Silence Breakers, the magazine’s Person of the Year, for speaking out about sexual assault and harassment in connection to the Harvey Weinstein sexual abuse cases and the #MeToo movement.
“It wasn’t mine,” she says, speaking of #MeToo. “It was literally a picture frame stuck around my message.” Her fight was never about fame, nor even feminism as it’s commonly defined. It was, and remains, about deprogramming a society intoxicated by manipulation and spectacle. “My message was about cult-like thinking,” she states, “because I grew up in one, and I know what it does.”
Before she became a lightning rod for cultural awakening, Rosa built a formidable career in Hollywood. She made her film debut in a brief role in Encino Man (1992), but it was her intense, breakout performance in Gregg Araki’s dark comedy The Doom Generation (1995) that marked her arrival as a fearless new talent, earning her an Independent Spirit Award nomination for Best Debut Performance. The following year, she was catapulted into the mainstream with her iconic role as the doomed teen Casey Becker in Wes Craven’s Scream (1996), now a horror classic. She continued to star in a string of genre-bending roles in films such as Going All the Way (1997), Devil in the Flesh (1998), and the cult favorite Jawbreaker (1999), which further cemented her as a symbol of dark, femme-powered subversion.
By the early 2000s, Rosa became a household name through her role as Paige Matthews on the WB supernatural drama series Charmed (2001–2006), where she played one of three sister witches, bringing a rebellious edge to the show’s final five seasons. Known for her distinct aesthetic, on-screen magnetism, and no-holds-barred attitude, Rosa cultivated a persona that was equal parts mystique and volatility—but rarely on her own terms.
Born Rosa Ariana McGowan in Florence, Italy, and raised within an artist-led, utopian commune known as the Children of God, her earliest impressions of the world were shaped by multiculturalism, spiritual extremism, and the absence of mirrors and media. Her family fled in the early 1980s, eventually resettling in Oregon. “When I came to the US, I saw all these square box houses and boxed minds. I felt much more sorry for them,” she reflects. “And wondered about the cult they were in.”
This outsider lens would become a defining feature of her life. By 15, Rosa was legally emancipated, living on her own in Los Angeles. Her resilience was forged through necessity. A few years later, she stumbled into acting, landing her first on-screen role, which would propel her into mainstream Hollywood productions. “It was extremely overwhelming,” McGowan shared regarding her early experiences in Hollywood, “I was very young. I didn’t have friends—I had agents and managers and lawyers. It’s a completely bizarre reality to find yourself in. I wouldn’t wish it on everybody. It’s really tricky. It’s like walking through a minefield in high heels and bright lights. And then you have knives coming at you from the front, the back, and the sides, and you have to put on a face. You can’t tell anyone what’s really happening. You can’t even really articulate it to yourself—because you’re just trying to survive. And you’re working 17-hour days.”
Even at the height of her fame, Rosa never felt fully at home in the entertainment machine. “I never enjoyed being in the public eye,” she admits. “I was discovered. I never really had the temperament or personality for it. I had moments where I could be an extreme extrovert, but it took a lot of battery power.” Her perspective wasn’t shaped by industry norms, but by a deep internal compass. “My joy was always making art and creating art. And I knew that as long as there was the specter of ‘Rose McGowan’—which isn’t even my real name—I couldn’t just be myself.”
Her birth name, Rosa Ariana, was erased on the first day of school in America. “I often feel like that’s a sliding doors moment. They said, ‘You don’t want to sound like a Mexican,’” she recalls. “And I had to go home and ask what that was. I didn’t understand that kind of mind.” That moment stayed with her—a symbol of erasure and control. Today, reclaiming the name Rosa is both personal and political. “Rosa is an artist. Not a performer. Professionally wearing masks for so many years—it was very hard. But I always knew who I was, even if I got lost for a bit. ‘Rosa’ might have had a softer existence. ‘Rose’ is a very impactful name. It’s kind of like a velvet fist. But it’s not exactly who I am.”
This outsider gaze would eventually inform everything from her memoir BRAVE—a manifesto of liberation that became a New York Times bestseller—to her E! docuseries Citizen Rose, a bold, raw chronicle of reclaiming her story.
Published in January 2018 by HarperOne, BRAVE is not only a memoir—it’s a declaration. McGowan’s incendiary account of survival, awakening, and transformation arrived not as a whisper, but as a war cry. Released at a time when the entertainment industry was reckoning with its long-standing abuses of power, the book cemented McGowan’s role as one of the most fearless voices in the fight to dismantle systemic misogyny. “I had a couple very intense years while writing the book. A lot of people tried to stop it,” she shared with Cesarine.
As noted in the book’s description, BRAVE is “a no-holds-barred, pull-no-punches account of the rise of a millennial icon, fearless activist, and unstoppable force for change.” With unflinching honesty, McGowan recounts a life shaped by the shadows of not one, but two cults: first, the radical Children of God sect in which she was raised, and later, the far glossier but no less insidious cult of Hollywood. “My life, as you will read, has taken me from one cult to another, the biggest cult of all: Hollywood,” McGowan writes. “BRAVE is the story of how I fought my way out of these cults and reclaimed my life. I want to help you do the same.”
The cover, stark and striking, captures McGowan in the act of shaving her head—a visual metaphor for shedding imposed identity, gendered expectations, and the industry’s false narratives. Beneath the surface, the book is as much a cultural critique as it is a personal memoir. McGowan reveals how Hollywood, a multibillion-dollar machine, relentlessly packaged her image as a sexualized bombshell while silencing her voice and hijacking her autonomy. “Hollywood expected Rose to be silent and cooperative and to stay the path,” the publisher states. “Instead, she rebelled and asserted her true identity and voice.”
Throughout BRAVE, McGowan dissects the psychology of control—how language, media, and power structures condition people to think and behave in ways that serve the system rather than the self. Whether she’s confronting her own assault by Harvey Weinstein or revealing the cultural programming embedded in beauty standards, scripts, and red carpets, McGowan never lets the reader forget the real cost of fame—and the radical power of reclaiming one’s voice.
“Hello fellow human, pleased to meet you. My name is Rose McGowan and I am BRAVE. I want you to be too,” she declares in one of the book’s most well-known lines. With that, she extends a hand not just to survivors of abuse, but to anyone navigating a culture that often punishes truth and rewards conformity.
The release of BRAVE coincided with Rosa’s four-part docuseries Citizen Rose, creating a twin impact that redefined the narrative not only for McGowan’s career but around the entertainment industry itself. “I thought somebody needs to document this. I’ve always believed in counter-programming,” she told Cesarine in their exclusive conversation for The Art of Resistance issue. “I chose the Kardashian producers to do something that was the least Kardashian-like… and they really galvanized. A lot of them privately said how much esteem it gave them to be part of something very real.”
Premiering on the E! Network in January 2018—the same week her memoir BRAVE was published—Citizen Rose offered viewers an unprecedented, unvarnished glimpse into Rosa’s life at the height of an unfolding cultural revolution. “I grew up with injustice, I grew up seeing my mother get harassed, and I decided not to stay silent,” she declared in the series trailer. Over four episodes, the documentary followed her as she confronted systemic abuse in Hollywood, launched her memoir, and navigated a surreal series of days that included her arrest, a meeting with President Barack Obama, and being named one of Time magazine’s Silence Breakers. Produced by Bunim/Murray, Citizen Rose rejected the glossy sheen of traditional reality TV in favor of a raw, intimate chronicle of reckoning, resistance, and radical truth-telling.
At the heart of the series was the ROSEARMY—a grassroots digital movement Rosa created to dismantle complicity and silence around abuse, misogyny, and the toxic systems propping them up. “I’ve been silenced for 20 years, I have been slut-shamed, I have been harassed, just like you,” she declared in her electrifying speech at the 2017 Women’s Convention in Detroit, a pivotal moment captured in the series. ROSEARMY became more than a slogan—it was a movement. It empowered survivors, demanded accountability, and stood as one of the earliest rallying points for what would evolve into the global #MeToo uprising. “Massive social change starts with just going outside of the system,” McGowan stated plainly in the series—underscoring her core belief that transformation comes not from within power structures, but by actively subverting them.
Citizen Rose is not just a documentary—it is an act of protest art, “I wish I had more middle fingers,” Rosa famously says in the series. A multi-sensory narrative stitched together with Rosa’s music, photography, visual artwork, and deeply personal moments. It defies the conventions of celebrity storytelling to create something far more urgent and affecting: a portrait of an artist in revolt. “My weapon is truth. That’s all I have,” she asserted at one point, her voice as steady as her purpose.
Through its personal and political lens, Citizen Rose documented the transformation of a public figure into an uncompromising cultural force—an artist who turned her trauma into a movement. A reclamation. And for Rosa, it was a declaration of selfhood in the face of an industry built on erasure.
That tension—between illusion and truth, programming and awakening—resonates through Rosa’s entire body of work. During the height of her public battles, she created constantly “It was a very creative time,” Rosa recalled. “I would work for about two to three hours a night on the book, then two or three hours on photography.”
She studied camera work on set during her years as an actor. “I learned a lot of tricks from working with the camera departments on sets… I basically interned for every other department.” Her creative aesthetic that evolved over the years is ethereal yet rooted in the technical knowledge of filmmaking. “My specialty is making things that look almost as if they’re computer-generated, but in fact are using old film techniques,” she shared, elaborating that she employs 1950s lenses and vintage processes to render images that blur the lines between reality and illusion.
Rosa’s participation in UPRISE 2025: The Art of Resistance marks a powerful return to The Untitled Space, where she first debuted her artwork in the landmark 2017 exhibition UPRISE/ANGRY WOMEN. Curated by Indira Cesarine in direct response to the election of Donald Trump, the original UPRISE show was conceived as an act of cultural defiance—an urgent call to arms against the mounting threats to women’s rights under an openly misogynistic administration. Presented in collaboration with the ERA Coalition, the exhibition featured 80 works selected from over 1,800 submissions, with proceeds benefiting the Fund for Women’s Equality. Rosa contributed not only her visual artwork but also her unapologetic voice.
On January 22, 2017—just one day after millions took to the streets for the Women’s March and on the 44th anniversary of Roe v. Wade—Rosa co-hosted the official artist talk and panel discussion Art and Activism with curator Indira Cesarine in support of the exhibit. The event drew a packed, standing-room-only crowd to The Untitled Space, where Rosa tearfully spoke out about the rampant sexual abuse in Hollywood, revealing truths that had long been buried beneath a culture of silence. Her raw, emotional statements prefigured the public reckoning that would soon follow, helping catalyze the global #MeToo movement.
With visceral conviction, Rosa addressed the real-world consequences of misogyny, referencing the case of Purvi Patel—an Indian-American woman sentenced to 20 years in prison for feticide after seeking help for a miscarriage. “This is my response,” she said of her exhibited piece, made with menstrual blood, baking soda, hydrogen peroxide, a magnifying glass, and high-speed film. “I used my voice and my body. My piece is about a woman who was put in jail for twenty years because of a womb.” Her words captured the political urgency of the exhibition, which tackled issues from reproductive justice to rape culture. “There is a war on women in this country,” she told the crowd. “Make no mistake. It is real, we have seen it, we see it.”
That night, Rosa didn’t just share a work of art—she ignited a spark. Her role in UPRISE/ANGRY WOMEN wasn’t merely artistic; it was historic. Her return to The Untitled Space in 2025 reflects not only the evolution of her voice as an artist but also the unwavering spirit of resistance she’s carried throughout her life. What began as protest has become practice—a creative mission rooted in truth, transformation, and survival.
In her most recent works, like those featured in UPRISE 2025: The Art of Resistance, Rosa transforms projected layers of hand-filmed color clouds into intimate topographies of the human form. Her piece Water Lilies, exhibited at The Untitled Space’s 10th Anniversary exhibition, epitomizes her exploration of duality. “With women, strength is very often underestimated, like Water lilies… they’re very tough, they’re very rooted. They look like these little things floating on the surface, pleasant to the eye,” she says. “But in fact, there’s some deep, deep roots and strength going on underneath.”
Her recent work is a meditation on softness and strength, often incorporating elements of nature—projected light, bird calls recorded on vintage 1970s sound equipment, color fields from alchemical experiments with powders and liquids. “Color has a lot to do with it. When I was young, I would feel emotion and color… I wouldn’t feel sad. A hazy green would come around me. I was always very fascinated by all the colors. I also love bodies as architecture. The joy of shape. The joy of color and sound combined.”
This deeply personal synesthesia lends itself to pieces that feel more like living memories than static images. They are layered, multi-sensory experiences—alive with motion, spirit, and vulnerability. “I perceive myself as Rosa, the soft version of me,” she notes. “Not the one that had to put on battle armor to deal with multimillions of people and a lot of heavy forces.”
What Rosa has built since her departure from Hollywood is nothing short of a renaissance. “I’ve worked really, really hard to become human,” she confides. “Because I always felt like an alien.” That journey—into solitude, silence, and selfhood—has reconnected her not only with her artistic core but with her own humanity.
Her life in Mexico, where she resettled in early 2020 after leaving London, has been both physically and spiritually transformative. “My father lived in Mexico on the West Coast for 35 years,” she explains. “He always said, ‘When you need to heal, come to Mexico.’” Following years in the United States and abroad, it was a return to a place long associated with personal refuge. “I was pretty exhausted by the culture wars, and it just started getting sad. And, I don’t know, I choose happiness—but it’s a fight.”
Rosa found herself in the remote Yucatán, immersed in an untamed environment that became both her collaborator and her teacher. “I fought boa constrictors. I had owls in my room. I battled hurricanes alone to keep my hut from flooding.” The intensity of the natural world forced her to recalibrate on every level. “Nature kicked my ass,” she laughs. “But then I made friends with it.”
“They say there’s a thousand ways to die in Mexico. But I would say that there’s also 1,001 ways to live. And both can be valuable.” The jungle, in all its beauty and danger, became a setting for reinvention—a far cry from Hollywood, yet deeply aligned with Rosa’s search for truth and presence. “I’ve always been a choose-your-own-adventure type of person and had a bit of a pirate’s life. I did not value the same things that other people in my industry did.”
Here, amidst the flora, fauna, and ancient echoes of the land, she creates not for the screen, but for herself—and for those willing to look beyond the noise. Her art is not didactic, though its implications are vast. “I would hope that people just see softness and strength and beauty,” she says. “In all ways—both with nature and with humans—and how interconnected we actually are.”
This philosophy extends to her musical project Planet 9, a sonic art piece crafted to heal with specific hertz frequencies, and her debut short film, which was nominated for a Grand Jury Prize at Sundance. Her performance art debuted at the Venice Biennale in 2019, further cementing her pivot into the art world not as a celebrity-turned-creative, but as a visionary.
The warrior has laid down her sword—not to surrender, but to create. “I just want to live a life that’s real,” Rosa insists. “To be quiet. To listen to the trees and the wind. To create because I feel like it—not because someone let me.”
The reality she left behind—of manipulation cloaked in glamour—is one she deconstructs with surgical precision. Her memoir BRAVE is not merely a recounting of trauma, but a searing examination of the media machine and psychological control. “What if the product could talk?” she muses. “What if the cigarette could tell you every chemical in it?”
Now, Rosa is choosing life on her own terms. She refuses to be boxed in by identity politics, or even by labels like “feminist.” “I’m pro individualism and I’m pro a healthy human,” she clarifies. “I think people really like labels. I don’t. We’re not born with one—why put yourself in it?”
The jungle offers no applause, no critics. But it offers truth. “It’s honest,” she says. “Unlike people, nature doesn’t manipulate.”
Her radical act, today, is not shouting from the mountaintop but cultivating joy in the quiet—living in color rather than being consumed by spectacle. “It’s a choice, and it takes deep bravery to move to another country… I think the ultimate freedom is not being a pawn on the chessboard,” she asserts. “Not everybody has to be played.”
And while the world may remember her as the actress who burned down a system of abuse, Rosa is far more interested in building something else—something rooted, wild, and transcendent. “I’ll pop back up in the public at some point when I feel like it,” she says. “I wanted to recharge and just experience life in a completely different way—not as somebody out in front of people or a camera or a microphone. I think I’ve earned some time off.”
Until then, Rosa’s message is clear, and perhaps more vital than ever: “Keep creating. Hold the line. And don’t be scared. They want us to be scared. They want us to be small. So—stand tall,” she urges. “Know that the wind is going to hit you. But guess what? You’re still going to be there afterward. You’re not going to blow to dust. I promise you.”
She signs off with words of encouragement, “Make friends with the person inside of you who was told how they had to be. What they couldn’t do,” she says. “And go back and let them know they can do it all.”
To listen to the full interview by Indira Cesarine with Rosa (Rose) Gowan, tune into The UNTITLED Podcast available on all major streaming platforms, including Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and Amazon Music, and more of your favorite podcast channels. The episode features original music “Green Gold” by Rose McGowan, from her album “Planet 9”.
Pick up a copy of The Untitled Magazine’s “The Art Of Resistance” ART EDITION to read her interview and view more of her artwork featured exclusively in the print edition out now. The inaugural art edition brings together an extraordinary group of contemporary artists whose practices center on themes of identity, empowerment, and social justice.
