Opening Celebration: Saturday October 11th, 4-7pm.
Open Hours: 11am-6pm Saturdays from October 18th through December 6th.
Extended Hours: During UAW Connects, October 25-26, open 11am-6pm both days, with a special performance by Ettun at 3pm on Saturday, October 25, 2025.
upbringing – a place to raise ideas and Upstate Art Weekend’s Headquarters - is proud to expand upon Tamar Ettun’s work, first featured in our inaugural group show Presence. We couldn't bear to part with pieces from her Lilit the Demon series, and invited Ettun to present works which haven’t been exhibited upstate. The result is a poignant and powerful solo exhibition - Lilit - that showcases her mastery of multiple mediums, each engaging the audience in deeply intimate and thoughtful ways.
We invite you to experience Purple Placenta, a monumental, interactive, multilayered inflatable sculpture originally exhibited at the Ford Foundation Gallery in New York City. Alongside it is the video piece IVF Documents, which reimagines an ancient healing ritual that addresses the multitude of realities in vitro fertilization. This work is currently also on view at the Museum of Arts and Design as part of the larger exhibition Designing Motherhood: Things that Make and Break Our Births.
Also featured is brand new work direct from Ettun’s studio: Lilit’s Aluminum Drawings, a striking series of laser-cut aluminum drawings. These are presented alongside her ceramic Demon Traps, works on paper, and the artist’s book Texts from Lilit—all part of the ongoing multidisciplinary series Lilit the Demon.
Since 2020, through Lilit the Demon, Ettun has explored themes such as the insidious side of empathy, empathy fatigue, trauma-healing modalities, and astrology as a form of storytelling—communicated in part through text messages to a growing community of participants and followers.
Ettun is a 2025-2026 Smithsonian Artist Research Fellow at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, where she is researching how contemporary female artists engage with themes of pregnancy, birth and motherhood through the intersections of bodily autonomy, reproductive health and protective practices.
During UAW Connects on Saturday, October 25th Ettun will be at upbringing and is looking for participants for a special performance at 3pm. Ettun will conjure and inhabit the persona of Lilit who will share her origin story from a feminist perspective and invite the audience to participate in somatic movement exercises designed to connect with their bodies and befriend their inner demons.
Within the umbilical cord of the Purple Placenta Lilit the Demon (aka Tamar) has been embedding stories of birth, miscarriage, abortion, IVF, infertility and loss. Do you have stories to share? They will not be visible from the outside, but their weight will be felt energetically in the sculpture. If you would like to participate, please submit your stories here.