Projects

The Fading Worlds series is Severijns’ artistic reaction to two turbulent years of political upheaval, inner-state conflict, and devastating war in Israel. Ideology, humanity, basic dignity, and social values, perceived as axioms, have been fading away, leaving space for a new world, a new reality still unclear. Fading Worlds asks the most pressing question: Which new order will rise after the chaos?

Working with her self-developed hand-tearing technique, Severijns visualizes life's destructive patterns, its rough and rugged edges, like the multi-tonal, shedding bark of an Eucalyptus tree. The series demonstrates a shift in her practice: abandoning neat, organized patterns and repetitive rhythms in her earlier work in favor of free-shaped, imperfect, torn pieces of paper.

In 2025, the series was developed into a wall installation, Fading vs. Emerging Worlds, consisting of seven different art pieces. The installation has a puzzle-like feel, and the viewer decides whether the worlds depicted are fading or emerging. 

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Having lived most of her life in the Netherlands, Severijns developed a fascination with the fickle nature of wind — it can be pleasant and beneficial. Yet, it possesses the power to shape landscapes for better or worse: creating beautiful dunes, eroding rocks, toppling trees, and, at its most destructive, forming dangerous tornadoes. In a series of five works, Severijns delves into the diverse forms of this invisible natural force: a breeze, a wind flaw, a gust, a whirlwind, and a storm. 

In 2022, Wind was exhibited at a major group exhibition at the Gustav-Lübcke Museum in Hamm, Germany. The entire series is now part of a private collection in Tel Aviv, Israel.

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During my visit in October 2018 to the exhibition “Modern Times Masterpieces” at the Tel-Aviv Museum of Art (on loan from the Philadelphia Museum of Art), I stood very close to the 50 masterpieces on display and photographed the mesmerizing detail of the brush strokes. The photos were added to my cherished art journal, where I save articles, sketches, ideas, and insights.

Looking back at the close-ups of these small elements from large impressionist and expressionist compositions, I see stunning independent abstract artworks. The isolated rhythms, colors, textures, and movement of Van Gogh, Kandinsky Klee, Monet, Matisse, Picasso, and Renoir inspired my new Reflection series. Details, nuances, flow, and texture are my signature style, along with an exploration of the fragility and strength of paper that deforms and transforms into a powerful expressive medium. 

A timely and happy shift is gathering momentum: paper art is slowly being embraced on center stage instead of the craft sideline where I refuse to be! The Whitney Museum is devoting an entire floor to the exhibition “Making Knowing”: Craft in Art | 1950 – 2019 and major art venues are recognizing artists like Lisa Lou, Anni Albers, Sheila Hicks and Ree Morton. 

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In the Protective Blankets series, Severijns reimagines the humanitarian relief blanket through the medium of paper. The blankets were conceived with the hope of promoting tolerance and appreciation, and the thousands of paper threads composing each of them symbolize a story on both a personal and collective level. The threads bring forth testimonies of people near and far who either need or provide protection. For Severijns, these people and their stories serve as a reminder to appreciate and never take any sense of security, dignity, equal opportunity, or freedom for granted. The micro paper threads form large woven pieces, which stand for macro-scale ideas of human rights of local and global populations at risk: children, women, political protesters, human trafficking victims, and racial and religious minorities.

The series stemmed from numerous online images of aid organizations, whose first act upon contact on a site is to offer blankets to survivors – a heartwarming, intuitive gesture. Similarly, the images captured by Japanese photographer Manabu Yamanaka of homeless men wrapped in blankets also bring forth the care, warmth, and protection associated with the blanket. As Severijns says, “We are welcomed into the world in a blanket, and we 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.”

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