Printed Matter and Dreamsong are pleased to announce the launch of The Demon of Growing Pains (2024), a new limited edition of 111 risographs by artist Tamar Ettun. The print was created on the occasion of the 2024 NY Art Book Fair, where the artist will present a monumental installation climbing five stories through the staircase and on to the roof. The new artists’ book How To Trap A Demon also accompanies the project.

Tamar Ettun’s multidisciplinary work in installation, drawing, sculpture, and performance examines somatic empathy, trauma-healing modalities, and ritual. Her ongoing (2020-present) project Lilit the Empathic Demon transliterates ancient Mesopotamian and Sumerian imagery and myth into a visual and performative language that explores questions like: “How can we care for ourselves and create systems that can care for us with intergenerational trauma in mind? How can we make these internal demons that we all have more visible? How can we name them?”

In the 2nd to 7th centuries, artist-healers created spells, drawings, and talismanic objects to trap demons like Lilit, who 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, Ettun studied their vocabulary and developed her own language that revives the tradition through a contemporary feminist lens, subverting Lilit’s misogynistic archetype and revamping her image as an Empathic Demon.

Ettun has performed and exhibited widely, including at the Walker Art Center, The Chinati Foundation, The Watermill Center, Marjorie Barrick Museum of Art, Sculpture Center, Madison Square Park, and The Jewish Museum. She is the recipient of awards and fellowships from The Pollock Krasner Foundation, Interlude Artist Foundation, MacDowell Fellowship, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, and the Art Production Fund, among others.

The risograph depicts Lilit in the form of The Demon of Growing Pains and is now available in advance of the fair exclusively to our subscribers. Read more about the project and Ettun’s practice on Art 21.