THE ART OF RESISTANCE: JEMIMA KIRKE ON ART, ACTING & ACTIVISM
British-American artist, actress, and writer Jemima Kirke has never played by the rules. From her raw and unpredictable portrayal of Jessa Johansson in HBO’s Girls to her disarmingly candid paintings and collages, Kirke’s work speaks to the messiness of identity and the beauty in refusing to conform.
Making her debut with The Untitled Space in the UPRISE 2025 exhibition, Kirke presents a trio of striking works—Girl in a Pink Room, Baby, and The Divorcée—each one a deeply personal excavation of complexity, and vulnerability, and emotional truth. Though created years ago, the pieces feel more urgent than ever, resonating with the feminist and political themes of the landmark 10th-anniversary exhibition. Her paintings are unapologetically intimate, inviting viewers to reflect on the freedom that comes from embracing one’s truth.
Beyond her artwork, Kirke is a vocal advocate for reproductive rights. She has spoken out against the politicization of women’s bodies, while challenging body shaming and abortion stigma. Emphasizing that women “should have one less thing to battle,” Kirke’s activism mirrors her art—centered on empowerment, self-possession, and the freedom to define one’s identity. As both artist and activist, she continues to champion a future where women define themselves on their own terms. Her artwork featured in the UPRISE 2025 exhibition marks a powerful return to her roots in visual art—revealing a voice that is unfiltered, deeply personal, and profoundly feminist.
She caught up with UNTITLED’s founder Indira Cesarine to chat about her work and the inspiration behind the pieces featured in the 10th Anniversary exhibition in an exclusive interview for The Untitled Magazine’s launch ART EDITION, The Art of Resistance. In the interview, she discusses her journey from art school to acting, her return to painting, and the personal and political themes that define her work, and shares what’s next on the horizon for her.
Read on for the interview below featuring original portraits of Kirke by Indira Cesarine, and pick up a copy of the issue for more on the 100 contemporary artists featured in The Untitled Space’s 10th anniversary exhibition.
“Painting is ultimately functionless,” Kirke declares. “But as a kid, it gave me something to do. I was one of the lucky few kids who knew from a young age what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wanted to be an artist. When I was bored, when I changed schools—drawing was my in. People were like, ‘Whoa, you’re really good at that.’”
A graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), Kirke didn’t always see a clear path forward. “I didn’t know what I was going to do after art school,” she reflected. “I felt a bit lost.” That changed when a stranger at an art supply shop offered her a corner of his studio. “He gave me old paintings, paint, a corner to work in. I didn’t know what the fuck to paint. I started with too many self-portraits. Then I started asking people around town to sit for me.”
Though painting was her first love, acting came unexpectedly—and with it, the tension of being seen as a celebrity dabbling in art. “My fear was that I’d be seen as the actress with a hobby—a hobbyist, which, for a painter, is a bad word. Like, it’s not even a four-letter word, but it might as well be,” she recalled. “I just figured, I’ll do the shows and the acting, and that was fucking hard. Doing both. I still struggle with it. I’ve learned you really can’t do more than one thing at a time to its fullest extent. Let alone two careers. I fuck up all the time.”
She moved back to New York and began selling her work privately, then connected with Sargent’s Daughters gallery, which became a long-term exhibition partner. Meanwhile, acting work arrived with the pilot for Girls. “It was big money, right? I had just had a baby.” She was told the role would be small, but “that’s not what happened.”
Her rise to fame as Jessa on Girls brought both creative opportunity and personal conflict. “I didn’t think anyone was going to watch it,” she admitted. “I didn’t see the political element or how provocative it was. I thought it was just funny.”
Only in retrospect did she grasp the cultural impact of the show. “There’s something in me where sometimes I just don’t clock taboos the way other people do.” That mindset—one of fearlessness and candid self-expression—has permeated all her work. “I’ve had a few moments in life where I was like, wait, I’m not supposed to do that? People give me too much credit for being a rebel.”
Since Girls, she has taken on a variety of roles that continue to explore complex femininity, including Melissa in Hulu’s Conversations with Friends, and Headmistress Hope Haddon in Netflix’s Sex Education. Both roles presented Kirke in new, layered ways that mirrored her own evolving identity. “I get excited to figure out what I have in common with the characters I work on,” she shared, “There’s always something, and it’s usually profound. It blows me away every time. Even when it’s obvious that we are vastly different.”
Growing up in a family of creatives—her mother works in fashion, and her father is a musician—expression was encouraged, but not always without expectation. “You’re the artist. That’s your thing, and when you’re given that label, you’re expected to use it,” she said, describing the pressure to live up to that identity. “But I don’t believe you have to do something just because you’re talented at it.”
Her creative influences are as candid as her reflections. “I’ve had to ‘kill’ Milton Avery, Courbet, Alice Neel, Van Eyck… Picabia too. I’ll take his big dick energy but the rest of them must be killed,” she laughed. “Sometimes I’ll see something that makes me want to quit painting altogether.” When a painting overwhelms her with beauty, it can feel paralyzing. “Sometimes I’ll see a painting and it feels like my own magnum opus.”
On her creative process, she shared, “I make lists. I have a list called Ideas For Things on my phone. It’s things I want to think about or make, just to see if it can stand on its own two legs… Then we’ll see about pushing it further or doing a series. But I have so many paintings that may never see the light of day.”
The work featured in UPRISE 2025 is among some of her most evocative works—not least because the works, Girl in a Pink Room, Baby, and The Divorcée, were made several years ago and had been tucked away, unseen. When invited to exhibit in UPRISE, Kirke revisited them and immediately felt their urgency aligned with the show’s feminist and political themes. “I knew there was something to them,” she said. “They just felt right for now.”
In Girl in a Pink Room, she paints her younger sister nude and holding a cigarette against the saturated hues of a hot pink bedroom. “She had these big, doe-like eyes—very innocent, that baby doll kind of look. It probably wasn’t necessary to put a cigarette in her hand, but I supposed I was having fun pushing the degeneracy of it.” Over time, she recognized the deeper message. “It’s distasteful. Which is really what makes it radical. The figure alone is clearly a nude child. But the style of the painting is what makes it vulgar. The cigarette tells the story of a precocious or degenerate child who is complicit in her own objectification. But she’s a child. So then the question becomes, ‘Who is the depraved one in this relationship?’ Her? Me? or the viewer? It’s interesting how the ones who would be most outraged by this painting are the same ones most dangerous to the young girls in our society.” Kirke confronts hypocrisy without hesitation, ”I’ll tell you one thing, Jeffrey Epstein would probably not appreciate it at all. But neither would the majority of the Senate or the Supreme Court.”
The ink painting Baby carries its own layered emotional intensity. Painted on both sides of a single sheet of paper, it features a fierce, almost furious rendering of a child on one side and a raw portrait of a mother on the reverse. Kirke mused. “I have a lot of paintings and drawings that are two-sided,” she explained. “Often because I’m just playing around. A lot of painting is just figuring it out. So sometimes you have a two-for-one! But you don’t expect someone to want it.” She compares the practice to cave drawings—“just recording it.”
“When I drew the one on the back—the mother—I was in quite the morbid mindset about being a mother myself. I was coming to terms with just how unsafe my kids were, how mortal. I don’t know why I didn’t expect that they’d be as fragile and as vulnerable as every other human being. I saw how unsafe she was, and I didn’t expect that. When she came out, she was just another vulnerable human being,” she said, speaking of her daughter. “She was mine—but anything could happen to her.” The drawing reflected her own reckoning with motherhood—its beauty, its pain, and its dread. “The ethos of parenting assumes that mothers are these awe-inspiring beings, these powerful forces with formidable endurance and resilience fueled by love… it’s so toxic. We have a right to be angry. We feel all kinds of ways,” she continues, “That’s what I liked about the ink drawing “Baby.” It’s not about love and connection. It’s not even really about a baby. And It’s not how people want to look at babies… as objects, or as the subject of a woman’s rage or regret.”
Her collage The Divorcée is another standout in UPRISE, layering retro imagery, roses, telephones, and glittering jewelry. “I love collages because I can really allow myself to gild the lily while creating them. My general aesthetic is decadent – roses and sparkles, chandeliers, pink satin, Barbie,” she explained. “Lately I’ve been painting jewelry—close-ups of ears with earrings, fingers with rings.”
In showing these works for UPRISE, Kirke wasn’t just exhibiting older pieces—she was reframing them in a political and cultural context where their unfiltered honesty could speak louder than ever.
Her feminism is deeply rooted in lived experience. In 2015, she made headlines with a PSA for the Center for Reproductive Rights, where she spoke openly about her abortion. “I didn’t even think twice about it. I’ve never felt ashamed,” she said. “It wasn’t until after the video came out that I realized what was remarkable about it.”
In the PSA, Kirke revealed she had an abortion while in college and couldn’t afford anesthesia. “I just didn’t have the money,” she recalled. She was candid with her children as well. “I’ve told my kids about my abortions too. I didn’t say it like a confession. I wasn’t admitting to something I’d done wrong—I just told them.” Kirke remains fiercely critical of the shame and control projected onto women’s bodies. “It was an embryo, a cluster of cells. It’s a serious decision to have a child. But the decision to abort an unwanted pregnancy should be the easiest one to make. It’s a relief. The procedure itself, that’s kinda serious. It really hurts. Hopefully, they figure out how to make it painless and easy. It should be like a fucking spa day.”
“These Lawmakers claim they’re ‘pro-life,” she added with emphasis. “The Trump administration wants us to have lots of babies, but with no consideration for the quality of life they’re forcing people and their children, entire families, to live!” Kirke stated with intensity, “You’re gonna tell people they have to carry this baby to term but not allow them to make enough money to care for it, nor give them any time to enjoy it. And along with all of that, no mental health care to be a good parent? No. Fuck you. And please don’t get me started on the ol’ ‘adoption’ solution.”
Lately, she’s been taking a pause from acting to focus on her studio practice and writing a book to be published by Dream Baby Press, though she remains open to future creative projects. “Right now I’m just focused on painting and the book. But life is nothing if not surprising. Who knows what will come up.”
Her new paintings signal a return to joy and self-reflection, “I’ve been painting a lot recently. I’m working on finishing older paintings, trying to figure out what those are. Sometimes I lose interest in them, but I still feel like I should finish them. It can be kind of punishing,” she shared. “And I’m writing a book! It’s basically done. I promise it’s not a memoir!”
Looking back on Girls, Kirke sees it differently now. “At the time, I thought it was kind of dull, honestly. Nothing really happens. But now I get why people saw it as radical.” The role of Jessa, unfiltered and emotionally volatile, helped redefine female complexity on screen. “It cracked something open for women on TV, I see that now.”
That same emotional complexity lives in her artwork—whether it’s the furious ink strokes of Baby, the haunting provocative gaze of Girl in a Pink Room, or the surreal fragmentation in The Divorcée. Her work is a map of contradictions: sacred and profane, intimate and irreverent, vulnerable and defiant.
As both artist and activist, Kirke remains committed to creative freedom, bodily autonomy, and emotional truth. Her work in UPRISE 2025 doesn’t just reflect resistance—it embodies it with grace, grit, and unapologetic beauty.
“It’s silly not to paint—just because there are better paintings out there,” she concluded. “That’s all ego.”
Kirke’s art doesn’t ask for permission. It lingers, provokes, and pulses with something deeply human—daring us all to look a little closer.
Pick up your copy of The Untitled Magazine’s launch ART EDITION, The Art of Resistance to see more from the shoot with Jemima Kirke and read about nearly 100 contemporary artists featured in this special print edition celebrating The Untitled Space’s 10th anniversary exhibition, available for purchase here.
