'Girls' Star Opens Art Exhibit On The Lower East Side

LOWER EAST SIDE, NY — One of the stars of "Girls" opened a solo exhibition at a Lower East Side gallery this month.

Jemima Kirke, one of the four main actors on the popular HBO show, opened her solo exhibit at the Sargent's Daughters gallery on Dec. 13.

The gallery, located at 179 East Broadway, is displaying Kirke's paintings until Jan. 21.

The show, titled "The Ceremony," features portraits of women wearing wedding dresses. The brides are almost all unsmiling. Kirke said she asked friends to pose for her in their dresses and also created some portraits from her imagination. The show includes portraits of Kirke herself in her wedding dress as well as her "Girls" co-star Allison Williams.

"Drawing on the shared experiences of women around her, as well as cultural expectation and attitudes towards marriage, Kirke examines the roles that a woman takes on as she transforms into a bride," according to the exhibit's description from Sargent's Daughters. "The resulting paintings are a powerful testimony to the inherent expectations of the bridal figure and the images that society collectively attaches to a woman about to be married."

Kirke said she began to look more closely at the tradition of the wedding ceremony after her own divorce.

"We want to participate in the pageantry and wear white and get handed off by our fathers," Kirke said in an interview with Bedford and Bowery. "I think that was when I came up with the idea initially, I was at a wedding and they did that and it just struck me as so gross. Why are we still doing that?"

Image credit: Jamie McCarthy / Getty Images / Getty Images Entertainment. Image caption: Actress Jemima Kirke attends The New York Premiere Of The Sixth & Final Season Of 'Girls' at Alice Tully Hall, Lincoln Center on February 2, 2017 in New York City.