Julie Graves Krishnaswami
Artist Statement
Office work; School work; Home work.
Bodies are shaped, contorted, and deformed by labor. My work focuses on the conditions of labor in everyday life and how those conditions impact the body. By interrogating my experiences as a woman, mother, lawyer, academic librarian, and medical patient with a chronic illness, I aim to unpack norms around work and how labor structures physical time, expectations, habits, and routines. On the surface, it may appear that I am the subject of my work, but my work is not about me per se. Instead, I use my body as a stand-in for the body of everyone who labors. In doing so, my goal is both to present this image to others for contemplation and to occupy my body’s intimate experience of the conditions of labor from a slightly distanced perspective. Addressing anyone who works—domestic or outside of the home, in whatever form—I aim to translate the affective experiences of work into consciousness.
Constrained and motivated by educational credentials and the collection of career “gold stars,” I’ve spent my whole life working towards or shirking forms of work. The residue of this search and the absurdity of the white- and pink-collar spaces that I am privileged to inhabit have left their trace on my body and my psyche. Drawing on the conditions in contemporary workspaces, including the classroom, academy, household, and medical office, among others, I spotlight collective pressures and sites of peril foreshadowing possibilities for protest, resistance, and humanity. Awareness surrounding the robotic assumptions and behaviors about one’s working conditions sparks contemplation, inquiry, and perhaps imagination.
I produce artist books, interventions, performances, works on paper, and textile/fiber-based materials. Drawing from social and legal history as well as critical theory, taking my inspiration from conceptual and feminist art practices, I use interdisciplinary research methods to frame my analysis. But I come to my work from the practice of law. The forms and dialects of my legal training organize my artistic practice resulting in subtly humorous but structural observations about contemporary conditions of labor.
Artist Bio
Julie Graves Krishnaswami (b. 1976) is a multidisciplinary artist whose work interrogates the intersections of labor, law, gender, and chronic illness through a feminist lens. She creates artist books, performances, interventions, videos, and installations, repurposing legal documents and texts.
Through her practice, Krishnaswami explores the embodied experiences of work, conditions of labor in everyday life, and how those conditions impact the body. She invites viewers to consider the nuanced experiences of labor and the personal narratives within professional contexts. Her art is a conduit for exploring how power structures and societal expectations shape individual and collective experiences.
Krishnaswami’s work has been exhibited and performed at the Joanne Toor Cummings Gallery, Connecticut College (New London CT), Artspace (New Haven, CT), the Yale Divinity School (New Haven, CT), the Lyman Allyn Art Museum (New London, CT), the Annette Howell Turner Center for the Arts (Valdosta, GA), among others. Krishnaswami was the recipient of the prestigious Puffin Foundation Grant in 2023.
Krishnaswami holds a BA from Reed College, a JD from the City University of New York School of Law, an MLIS from Pratt Institute, and an MFA in Visual Art from Vermont College of Fine Arts. She is the Associate Law Librarian for Research Instruction and a Lecturer in Legal Research at the Lillian Goldman Law Library at Yale Law School.