Transformer is excited to further advance our mission with newly expanded Siren Arts programming in Asbury Park, NJ. With support from Starfield, along with funding from individual donors, Siren Arts programming will continue at the Asbury Ocean Club corner of 4th Ave & Kingsley St through at least summer 2025!

Opening October 19 and running through November 30, How to Trap a Demon: Asbury Park Edition is a new art installation by Brooklyn, NY based Siren Arts alumni artist Tamar Ettun - Founder of the Moving Company, who were Siren Arts’ artists-in-residence in 2018. ⁠How to Trap a Demon: Asbury Park Edition is part of an ongoing body of work Ettun has been pursuing & evolving since 2020. This multidisciplinary work centers around Lilit, (Lilith) the demon of empathy, and explores the insidious side of empathy, empathy fatigue, trauma-healing modalities, and astrology as storytelling.

“This body of work centers on Lilit, an aerial spirit demon with origins in Sumerian, Akkadian, and Judaic mythology. In the 2nd-7th centuries, artist-healers created spells, drawings, and talismanic objects to trap demons who were often named Lilit. Lilit was characterized as a dangerously sexual female entity, and appeared frequently on incantation bowls used in protective rituals. Enthralled by the images inscribed on these ancient objects, I began studying their vocabulary and eventually, developed an interdisciplinary language that revives these practices through a contemporary feminist lens, subverting Lilit’s misogynistic archetype and revamping her image as an Empathic Demon.” - Tamar Ettun

Ettun creates immersive textile installations, sculptures, drawings, videos, and performances that reflect on somatic empathy – the process of responding to others through sensory-based, embodied experiences – in relation to trauma healing and ritual. The exhibition How to Trap a Demon: Asbury Park Edition features seven mixed media demon drawings depicting the multiple faces of Lilit. Installed inside the gallery’s windows, Yellow Wave Cave (2023) transforms the space into a safe haven for Lilit who was banished for pursuing independence. This large-scale mixed media work, consisting of hand-dyed and painted stitched boat sails with collaged elements, references the medieval myth in which Lilit escapes to the Red Sea.

Read more about this work in an interview with Tamar by Jurrell Lewis at Art21, and an essay by Elisabeth Workman published by The Walker Art Center, “Demon Bloomsongs: Tamar Ettun’s Vivid Somatics”.

“I’m incredibly thrilled to be able to advance Transformer’s mission of support for artists with this growth in Siren Arts programming in Asbury Park, NJ. It’s an honor to be building more connections for artists, and to engage growing audiences for innovative contemporary art! I’m especially excited to launch this new fall season of Siren Arts programming with Tamar Ettun, an artist I’ve had the great pleasure of working with since 2014, when Transformer presented her solo exhibition My Hands are the Shape of My Height in Washington, DC.” - Victoria Reis, Siren Arts Curator & Transformer Founder/Director

Launched in 2017 by Transformer Founder & Director Victoria Reis, Siren Arts is an innovative summer residency program & public performance art series based in Asbury Park, NJ that supports emerging visual artists throughout the northeast corridor of Washington, DC to NYC. This program primarily focuses on providing urban-based artists a unique opportunity to enjoy creative time at the beach and advance their work. Transformer’s goal with Siren Arts is to empower participating artists and engage audiences in celebration of the ocean, the intersectional effects of climate change, and human & environmental interconnectedness, while introducing and advancing innovative contemporary art practices.

ABOUT THE ARTIST / 
Tamar Ettun (she/they) creates immersive textile installations, sculptures, drawings, videos, and performances that reflect on somatic empathy – the process of responding to others through sensory-based, embodied experiences – in relation to trauma-healing and ritual. She has exhibited and performed at The Walker Art Center, Pioneer Works, The Chinati Foundation, The Shelburne Museum, Marjorie Barrick Museum of Art, The Watermill Center, Art Omi Sculpture Garden, PERFORMA, Socrates Sculpture Park, The Jewish Museum, and Sculpture Center. Ettun received many awards and fellowships including support from The Pollock Krasner Foundation, Interlude Artist Residency, Fountainhead, Moca Tucson, Stoneleaf Retreat, MacDowell Fellowship, Franklin Furnace, Iaspis, Art Production Fund, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Triangle Arts Association, Abrons Art Center and RECESS.Ettun’s recent monumental sculpture, Purple Placenta, was commissioned by the Ford Foundation for the exhibition Catando Bajito: Incantations, which examines forms of resistance in response to widespread violations of bodily autonomy and gender-based violence. She holds an MFA in Sculpture from Yale University.