Shreyas R Krishnan

Shreyas R Krishnan is an illustrator-designer from Chennai, India. She makes non-fiction comics and zines about memory, identity, and complex social issues. Her research explores how gender and visual culture impact each other.   

Her comics have been nominated for an Ignatz Award twice — for “Ley Lines #12: Maqsood-i-Kainaat,” and for “Bystander Anthology: Stories, Observations and Witnessings from South Asia” which she also co-edited. Krishnan founded and co-organizes Bad Drawing Club, an informal monthly drawing group for people of marginalized genders. In collaboration Aggie Toppins, she initiated the TL;DR Zine Archive, a collection of zines about design and illustration. 

Personal Website

Work by Shreyas R Krishnan

R krishnan shreyas image 5 bad drawing club x slice expo 2023 1

Bad Drawing Club x SLICE, 2023

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Surviving the Storm of Corporate Greed, 2023

Doing Things With Images, 2022

The Spectacle of Violence, 2022

கனி / Kani, 2022

A comic strip about an event and protests that followed: the text reads, "the videos of the incident went viral... and triggered outrage from Dalit communities, sparking protests across the state. (Online comment —) Do we really need to see such violent images? Please use your judgement before sharing! (Reply to this comment —) But if we don't see it for ourselves, how can we believe what's being reported?" The illustrations include a band of pixellated video footage at the top, and below, a hand scrolling through the news coverage.

Select Focus, 2021

Select Articles, Chapters, and Publications

“A Trumpian Miasma in Words and Pictures,” a book review of “Big Man and the Little Men” by Clifford Thompson, in The Common Reader: A Journal of the Essay, Washington University in St. Louis, 2023.
“Bystander Anthology: Stories, Observations & Witnessings from South Asia,” 2020. Edited by Aarthi Parthasarathy, Akhila Krishnan, Gopika Bashi, Mira Felicia Malhotra, Sabika Abbas Naqvi, and Shreyas R. Krishnan. Kadak Collective.

Select Exhibitions and Presentations

“Cut, Paste, Fold, Staple: Zines from the TL;DR Zine Archive”, Chalmers Gallery, University of Kansas, Lawrence, Kansas, co-curated with Aggie Toppins, 2024
“The Missing Nose: Illustrating Surpanakha’s Mutilation,” Shreyas R. Krishnan; presented at Illustration & Heritage: Sharing Histories to Draw Out Futures 14th Annual International Illustration Research Symposium, 2024, Camberwell College of Arts, London.
“TL;DR Zine Archive: Collecting Creative Research & Fostering Collaboration,” (Co-authored with Aggie Toppins, presented at Symposium Selfing and Shelving: Zines, Zine Media, and Zintivism, 2024, Universität Mainz, Mainz, Germany.

Select Awards and Grants

2024 – American Illustration 43 THE ARCHIVE, Bad Drawing Club promotional graphic
2024 – $15,000 Center for the Study of Race, Ethnicity & Equity (CRE2) Seed Grant, for manuscript preparation of “Turn the Page!” Washington University in St. Louis, Shreyas R Krishnan, Vidyun Sabhaney, Dr. Jeremy Stoll, and Mara Thacker
2023 –American Graphic Design Award, “Surviving the Storm of Corporate Greed: 500 Indian Welders Trafficked by an Offshore Drilling Rig Construction Company,” Stephen Zhang

News

Featured news

2021 Emerson Excellence in Teaching Awards

Shreyas R Krishnan is one of seven WashU faculty members honored for teaching excellence.

Featured news

Examining Culture, Comically

Shreyas R Krishnan is on a crusade—a comics crusade!—to make more voices heard.

Featured news

Society of Illustrators 64th Annual Exhibition

The Sam Fox School’s John Hendrix, Shreyas R Krishnan, Noah Jodice, and Nat Thomas have had work accepted into the premier showcase for illustrators and animators.

Featured news

TL;DR and the Case for Making as Research

The Sam Fox School’s Aggie Toppins and Shreyas R. Krishnan discuss their TL;DR zine archive, a collection of small-batch publications that use design and illustration to explore visual culture.

Portrait of Shreyas R Krishnan seated in studio, working on an illustration.

Two illustrations. In the illustration at left, a woman, identified as Kannagi rendered in green stands defiantly against a backdrop of yellow fire. She points her left hand skyward. Where her left breast should be, a black mark appears. In her right hand, she holds her absent left breast, her arm bent, readying to hurl the breast skyward. The illustration at right shows two conditions which cause malformation of the chest. Two figures in underpants stand facing each other at a wide angle. The figures are drawn as crude blue outlines. The ribcages, drawn in a sea green, are visible from the collar bone to the abdomen. The breast plates, in deep pink, show abnormal curvatures, which has affected the development and position of the breasts.

Illustration of a person seeming to float, suspended in the air, in a subway car filled with water, while another person in a suit coat and hat sits on a bench with a pen and newpaper in hand.

Spread of a zine with cream and light blue pages. Music notation extends across the left page, and on the right page, the text "Keep Off Grass" sits in a frame on top of another diagram and an amorphous shape filled with grass texture.

Shreyas R Krishnan is one of seven WashU faculty members honored for teaching excellence.

Shreyas R Krishnan is on a crusade—a comics crusade!—to make more voices heard.

The Sam Fox School’s John Hendrix, Shreyas R Krishnan, Noah Jodice, and Nat Thomas have had work accepted into the premier showcase for illustrators and animators.

The Sam Fox School’s Aggie Toppins and Shreyas R. Krishnan discuss their TL;DR zine archive, a collection of small-batch publications that use design and illustration to explore visual culture.