Examining Culture, Comically

I am an illustrator and designer from Chennai, India, and I am interested in the ways visual culture and gender studies intersect. At the core of my work is memory—both personal and collective—and this translates into nonfiction zines, comics, and documentary drawings, often centered on women.

Drawing, for me, is a way to remember and record the world around me. It’s absolutely fascinating to me that images can be so instantly accessed by different audiences. When I began making comics, I felt like I discovered a new language that made it much easier for me to communicate using both drawing and writing.

I joke often that I’m on a #comicscrusade. I want to equip more people to not just read comics, but to actually make them. On an individual level, they help people navigate their emotions and responses to external events. At a community level, comics have helped report and break down societal issues. When more people make comics, we have more voices heard, more representation, and more normalization of the diversity that is constantly around us.

—Shreyas R Krishnan