A Special Hanukkah Candle Lighting and Performance
How to Trap a Demon: Immersive Encounter with Artist Tamar Ettun
Join the Jewish Museum on December 18, the fifth night of Hanukkah, for How to Trap a Demon, an immersive encounter with artist Tamar Ettun. Visitors will be invited to participate in a two-part performance beginning with a viewing of over 130 Hanukkah lamps on view at the Museum, followed by a somatic invocation guided by the demon Lilit (Lilith), conjured by the artist. In her reimagining of Lilit—a mythological figure of fear reclaimed as a symbol of female autonomy—Ettun crafts a luminous and timely work of healing and reclamation through embodied movement, shifting light, and emerging shadows. The artist invites participants to take part in a collective ritual that connects them with their own and others’ shadows.
Reception and candle lighting begin at 5:30 pm; performance begins at 6:30 pm. Hanukkah treats and refreshments will be served.
Free with RSVP; Museum admission included
Demons: Tina Wang, Ezra Benus, Andy Nicholas Li
Costume Design: VVORK VVORK VVORK
Ceramic bowl: Jennifer Fiore/MONDAYS
Lighting Design: Robert Cangemi
Assistance: The One Who Triumphs Obstacles
About the Artist
Tamar Ettun creates sculpture, video, and performances, often using textiles, that reflect on somatic experiences in relation to trauma-healing rituals. She has exhibited and performed at the Museum of Arts and Design, the Ford Foundation, the Walker Art Center, Pioneer Works, the Chinati Foundation, the Shelburne Museum, the Watermill Center, Art Omi Sculpture Garden, PERFORMA, Socrates Sculpture Park, and SculptureCenter. Her practice has been supported by the Pollock-Krasner Foundation and MacDowell.
Ettun is a 2025–2026 Smithsonian Artist Research Fellow at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, researching how female artists engage with themes of reproductive health and protective practices. Her newest film, IVF Documents, is on view as part of Designing Motherhood at the Museum of Arts and Design, and a public project with asylum-seeking mothers commissioned by ArtBridge will open in the spring. Her work is included in the new sculpture anthology Great Women Sculptors, published by Phaidon Press (2024). She holds an MFA in Sculpture from Yale University.
Tamar Ettun’s Lilit at Armory Off-Site, 2023. Photograph by Charlie Rubin, courtesy of the artist and Dreamsong. | Installation view of The Pruzan Family Center for Learning at the Jewish Museum. Photo by Kris Graves.
