Fierce feminist and current BUST cover girl Rose McGowan has released a short film entitled WOMENSWOMB. The haunting clip is based on the plight of Purvi Patel, who was sentenced by an Indiana court to 20 years in prison after inducing her own abortion (the Governor at the time? The one and only Mike Pence).
McGowan has premiered the film on Dazed, explaining the work in an accompanying interview. “For Woman’s Womb, I actually used some of my own blood, put hydrogen peroxide in it, bubbled it up, filmed it and then had a lovely Indian model in something that looks womb-like work her way out of it,” she says. “The black bars on the side of the frame represent how society squeezes women, squeezes their rights. In almost all of my work, including my movie Dawn that I directed, I work with a lot of layers. Everything has a specific point.”
Throughout the clip, McGowan repeats the words, “And there she was, bursting forth into the world.”
“That’s what we do as girls when we’re born, we burst forth,” she told Dazed. “And a lot of times, our light is taken from us. I want to give that back.”
McGowan, who quit acting as a result of Hollywood’s pervasive sexism, has been channeling her anger into art and activism. WOMANSWOMB will be part of a group exhibition of female artists called Uprise/Angry Women, responding to Trump’s election and the 44th anniversary of Roe v Wade, which falls two days after Trump’s inauguration.The exhibit is on view at New York’s Untitled Space from January 17th through January 28th.
Top photo by Jill Greenburg for BUST’s December/January 2016 issue; WOMENSWOMB photo and video by Rose McGowan
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