Taxpayer-subsidized art center in Minnesota holds 'playful demon summoning session' for families

A contemporary art museum in Minneapolis, which has received millions in taxpayer funds, invited families earlier this month to "participate in a playful ceremony to summon and befriend their demon."

The Walker Art Center, which Alpha News indicated has enjoyed funding from the Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund, advertised demon-summoning activities from 10 a.m. until 1 p.m. on Aug. 5 at the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden.

"Demons have a bad reputation, but maybe we're just not very good at getting to know them," said the event listing on the art center's website. "Do you have a demon that creeps into your thoughts? ... Work with visiting artist Tamar Ettun to design a vessel for holding the demon you know best!"

Tamar Ettun, a so-called performance artist who refers to herself as a sexual plurality, seeks through the ongoing "multidisciplinary project" she brought to the art center to conjure the "aerial spirit demon, Lilit (Lilith), whose story traces back to ancient Sumerian, Akkadian, and Judaic mythology."

The seeming occultist writes on her website, "In the 2nd-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. The rituals were often performed by womxn concerened [sic] with medical issues like pregnancy and birth. I revive these practices through a feminist lens by subverting Lilit’s misogynistic archetype and revamping her image as an Empathic Demon."

To this end, she takes on the "persona of Lilit and, through text messages, interact[s] with several hundreds of people every month ... who frequently write her back with snippets about their lives and demons."

Having adopted the persona of the ancient demon who she acknowledges is associated with "unchecked violence and manipulation" and who first "came to her" after she learned she was pregnant, Ettun then provides instructions to her occultist pen pals that "lead to offline actions, such as an exercise that leads participants to find something in their home shaped like a full moon, and use it to draw on their body."

Beyond fielding questions on behalf of the demon, earlier this summer, Ettun raised inflated sculptures in the demon's honor outside Vermont's Shelburne Museum.

It does not appear that her exhibits are entirely bloodless. Her previous display at an art college in Purchase, New York, appears to have involved imagery of her burying another woman's placenta.

Following the instruction of children and adults on how to construct a "vessel" to hold their demons earlier this month, the Walker Art Center indicated, "Lilit the Empathic Demon will come from the dark side of the moon to lead you in locating your feelings using ancient Babylonian techniques. This collective and playful demon summoning session will conclude with a somatic movement meditation, designed to help you befriend your shadows."

Besides demon summoning, it appears Minnesota taxpayers have subsidized a number of other questionable activities.

Alpha News previously reported that as of 2021, Minnesota's Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund, which has supported the demon-friendly Walker Arts Center, had spent over $630 million on leftist groups and propaganda, including an adaptation of the "Sleeping Beauty" fairy tale "collaboratively re-imagined through a queer lens"; an anti-police documentary; a group that supports transvestic agitprop in film; a theater company's production of "queer and trans stories"; "Drag Story Hour in Minneapolis"; and a production called "Queertopia."

7 MINUTES TAMAR ETTUN MARCH 27 2020youtu.be

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