Derived from a combination of Venter meaning Belly and Loqui, meaning to speak, the practice of Ventriloquism dates back to ancient times when priests and prophets would conjure voices, claiming that spirits were trapped in the ground or in their bellies. This perspective of a voice trapped, contained, and cut off is key to Julie’s practice. By definition, ventriloquism breathes life into inanimate objects; Julie breathes life back into bodies that are being objectified.
However, instead of the entertaining repartee that characterizes traditional ventriloquists’ acts, Julie’s work points to the procedures of courtrooms, which silence other bodies.
Her performance video Sigh is a case in point! Here Julie transcribes the testimony of Dr. Christine Blasey Ford during the confirmation hearing of Brett Kavanaugh into a calligraphic script. Meanwhile, a sound track of Ford’s testimony plays, but her words have been edited out. All we hear are the sounds of her breath, her sighs and spirit trapped and trying to be heard. Sigh is the counterpart to Julie’s most recent performance where she reads a catalogue of phrases used to interrupt and otherwise silence women giving testimony. These works powerfully underscore the persistent consequences of patriarchal power, which continues to suppress women’s voices in courtrooms, professional meetings, and even simple exchanges among colleagues.
- Professor Marie Shurkus, Maine College of Art & Vermont College of Fine Arts.
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 known, 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 has left its trace on my body and my psyche. Drawing on the conditions in contemporary work spaces, 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.
Bio
Julie Graves Krishnaswami (b. 1976) has a BA from Reed College, a JD from CUNY School of Law, and an MLIS from Pratt Institute. She has published articles on legal research pedagogy and regulatory research. Currently, she is the Head of Research Instruction at Yale Law School where her Advanced Legal Research courses are regularly oversubscribed. She recently completed an MFA (Visual Arts) at Vermont College of Fine Arts.
Exhibitions
2022
Still Processing: Micro-Residency of the Unlearning Collective (Renee Bouchard, Julie Krishnaswami, Matthew Gernt). Curated by Laurel McLaughlin and Gabriel Sacco, Artspace, New Haven, CT. December.
The Will to Change: Gathering As Praxis, Joanne Toor Cummings Gallery, Connecticut College, New London CT, October – December. Opening Reception Performance of A List of Words and Phrases, October 1.
The Will to Change: Gathering As Praxis, Lyman Allyn Art Museum, New London CT, June – August. Opening Reception Performance of A List of Words and Phrases, June 24.
2021
Open Source Festival, New Haven City-Wide Open Studios), New Haven, CT, October
MFA Graduating Exhibition, Vermont College of Fine Arts, Virtual Residency, July
She Said, She Said, She Said – Annette Howell Turner Center for the Arts, Valdosta, GA, January 11 – February 24, 2021. Three-person exhibition of the collective She Said, She Said, She Said
2020
MFA Exhibition - Fourth Residency, Vermont College of Fine Arts, Virtual Residency, July 2020
2019
MFA Exhibition – Third Residency, Vermont College of Fine Arts, Montpelier, VT, July 2019
Yale Health Plan, Yale University, New Haven, CT, September 2019 – May 2020 (juried)
Complicit – Erasure of the Body, Nasty Women Connecticut, Yale Divinity School, February 2019
MFA Exhibition – Second Residency, Vermont College of Fine Arts, Montpelier, VT, January 2019
2018
34th Annual National Collage Society Juried Exhibition, Online at National Collage Society 2018
MFA Exhibition – First Residency, Vermont College of Fine Arts, Montpelier, VT, July 2018
The Collage Garden, 6BC Botanical Garden, New York, NY, May 2018
Silence Breakers – Nasty Women Connecticut, Ely Center of Contemporary Art, New Haven, CT, February 2018
Unnatural Symmetry, Rochester Collage Society, the Yards Arts Collective, Rochester, NY, February 2018 (juried)