Veronica Spiljak

Veronica Spiljak’s installation What’s Your Screen Time? was conceived during the COVID-19 global pandemic. The work appropriates a poem Spiljak wrote during lockdown at a time when online school fatigue, or “pandemic fatigue” was prevalent. The work is a series of mixed-media printed works suspended by wires, that utilize acetate sheets draped and hung tight to convey the disconnection between our physical bodies as we float through life online. For the bases of her patterns, Spiljak references microbial organisms and virus types, specifically drawing inspiration from photographs taken from government websites and university biology labs. The warping and distortion of the text embody the word that it is representing, ranging from a passing thought to an overflowing anxious feeling. Spiljak utilizes different techniques of patterning and layering of words to impart different emotions. The images she projects on the installation offer a pause or a break from the tension and overbearing exhaustion of the suspended imagery. Through her work, Spiljak comments on the constant need to be in front of our screens and logged in online. The work questions how our everyday online presence can cause psychological and physical fatigue—we are neither here, nor there, but on the Internet.

Veronica Spiljak is a multimedia and performance artist based in Mississauga, Ontario. She is completing her undergraduate degree in UTM and Sheridan College’s joint Art & Art History program. Spiljak combines drawing, screen-writing, video, sound, photography, installation, and performance to create artworks that facilitate collaborative and immersive experiences. Exploring trauma, anxiety, depression and mental illness, Spiljak seeks to make visible issues surrounding mental health, as well as psychological and physical effects of trauma.