Girls star Lena Dunham to be special guest at Edinburgh Art Festival event

Lena Dunham, the star of hit comedy-drama series Girls, has been announced as a special guest at a performance during the Edinburgh Art Festival.

The Golden Globe winner will join sculpture artist Lindsey Mendick for a conversation entitled Shameful Women on August 19.

Both women will speak openly and honestly about their personal experiences during the one-off event at Jupiter Artland, a contemporary sculpture park and art gallery on the outskirts of the city.

Dunham is a writer, director, actor and producer who was born and raised in New York City. She wrote and appeared in Girls, which ran for six series and was nominated for 11 Primetime Emmys awards.

She has won two Golden Globes, a Writer’s Guild Award, and was the first woman to win the DGA award for best director for a television comedy. Her prose has been published in The New Yorker, The Guardian, Vogue, Harper’s Magazine and The New York Times.

Mendick works predominantly with clay, and houses her artwork in life-like installations, recreating scenes from her personal life.

Her solo commission is currently presented across Jupiter Artland’s galleries. It is her largest commission to date and presents a contemporary view of duality and supposed binaries between good and evil, virtue and depravity, and gender roles.

The two women will come together at this year’s Jupiter Rising festival, which takes place at Jupiter Artland over a single night and will also feature live music, dancing, karaoke and DJ sets.

Jupiter Artland founder and director Nicky Wilson said: “These two women bring their power of observation and relentlessly confessional instincts to site their work in a most compelling medium themselves.

“This talk is not about women and shame, it’s an exploration about shameful, proud women that transmute shame into observations that resonate with us all.

“Mendick does not shy away from confession and mess as she presents unflinching observations of the power of drink – it’s fun and it’s optimism alongside the messiness and regret that it also inflicts.”

Kim McAleese, director of the Edinburgh Art Festival, said: “We are thrilled to collaborate with Jupiter Artland on this amazing one-night event, with such a fantastic range of collaborators and performers and curated by active, important and exciting artists and arts workers.

“Our EAF 2023 programme is one which seeks to platform local grassroots artists alongside those working globally and is a programme which is deeply connected to feminist and queer practice.

“This event will be a key moment in our 2023 programme and will also of course be a memorable day and night of art, music and dancing and for people to come together.”

For further information about Jupiter Rising and to buy tickets, go to www.jupiterrising.art.