Protective Blankets | 2019

Protective Blanket 11 and Protective Blanket 5 | part of solo exhibition | 2019

Although often perceived as an ordinary object, a blanket is loaded with associations, connotations, and expectations. It holds the promise of care, warmth, and protection. We are welcomed into the world and leave it in a blanket. In the lifetime in between, we need physical, metaphorical, and metaphysical protective blankets for our personal existence and well-being.

Severijns’ Protective Blanket art is designed with the hope of creating awareness and dialogue about tolerance and appreciation. Each of the thousands of paper threads composing her Protective Blanket art installation symbolizes a micro-level personal story in our communities, countries, or a different continent. The threads imply testimonies of people needing or providing protection, whether near or far. For Severijns, these stories and people serve as a reminder to appreciate and never take any sense of security, dignity, equal opportunities, or freedoms for granted. The micro paper threads form larger woven pieces that stand for macro-scale ideas of human rights of populations at risk locally and globally – children, women, political protesters, human trafficking victims, and racial and religious minorities, for example.

Excited by her first upcoming solo exhibition at Periscope Gallery Tel Aviv, Severijns will present three Humanitarian Protective Blankets. Challenging the physical characteristics of paper and its limits, the first Protective Blanket in the exhibit – “Scratch”  – is a flexible, supple, wearable yet durable art piece. The second Protective Blanket, titled “11” ( see image), is constructed of eleven rectangular pieces arranged in a tile pattern. Each piece represents a theme that still needs a “protective blanket”: gender equality, social justice, privacy, equal opportunities, security, freedoms, respect, truthfulness, racial equality, and dignity. Her latest Protective Blanket 5 is a tribute to her second daughter finished army service. 

Periscope Gallery, Ben Yehuda Street 176, Tel Aviv, Israel

10.10. 2019 till 15.11.2019

Opening evening: 10.10. 2019 20:00

Opening hours of the Gallery: Mondays till Thursdays, 17:00 – 20:00

Fridays and Saturdays 11:00 – 13:00

Curator: Tal Beck

For Inquiries, contact the artist.

All image courtesy: Sigal Kolton