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People • Faculty

Shreyas R. Krishnan

Shreyas R. Krishnan is an illustrator-designer making comics and zines about feminist praxis, visual culture, and collective memory. Combining personal narratives with history, gender theory, and illustration research, her work interrogates how visual culture and notions of identity are linked, especially in South Asian contexts.

She founded and co-organizes Bad Drawing Club, an informal monthly drawing group for people of marginalized genders. In collaboration Aggie Toppins, Krishnan curates and maintains the TL;DR Zine Archive, a collection of zines that make critical inquiries in graphic design and illustration held in WashU Special Collections.

Krishnan headshot
Shreyas R. Krishnan
Assistant Professor
Academic programs
Master of Fine Arts in Illustration & Visual Culture
Bachelor of Fine Arts in Communication Design
Bachelor of Arts in Design
Email
sravikrishnan@wustl.edu
Office
Steinberg 008
Box
1031-104-001

Work by Shreyas R Krishnan

Select Articles, Chapters, and Publications

  • “V.T. Thomas and Others vs. Malayala Manorama Co Ltd. In A Moving Line: 1500 Years of Indian Visual Storytelling,” 2026. Written by Aarthi Parthasarathy, illustrated by Shreyas R. Krishnan. Museum of Art & Photography (MAP).

  • “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

  • “Maqsood-i-Kainaat” and “Bystander Anthology,” Shreyas R. Krishnan; included in A Moving Line: 1500 Years of Indian Visual Storytelling, 2026, Museum of Art & Photography, Bengaluru, India.

  • “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.

Select Awards and Grants

  • 2026 – American Illustration 45 THE ARCHIVE, Body as Site

  • 2025 – Gold Award, University & College Designers Association Design Award, Cut, Paste, Fold & Staple (TL;DR Zine Archive 2025 Catalog), with Aggie Toppins

  • 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