Jaishri Abichandani was born in 1969 in Bombay, India, Abichandani immigrated to New York City in 1984. Abichandani founded the South Asian Women’s Creative Collective, www.sawcc.org in New York (1997 - 2013) and London (2004); dedicating sixteen years to creating spaces for feminist artisitc production. Abichandani has exhibited her work internationally including at MoMA P.S.1; the Queens Museum, the Asia Society, the IVAM in Valencia, House of World Cultures in Berlin, etc. Abichandani’s work encompasses creating objects, exhibitions and culture. She received her MFA from Goldsmiths College, University of London.
Jaishri served as the Founding Director of Public Events and Projects from 2003-6 at the Queens Museum where she connected the museum to local communities and organized exhibitions. In 2017 Abichandani engineered a collaboration between the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center, the Asia Society and the www.QueensMuseum.org to organize a three day national convening of South Asian American artists, academics and curators; along with the exhibition “Lucid Dreams and Distant Visions”. Later in 2017, her silent #metoo protest outside her rapist Raghubir Singh’s exhibition at the Met Breuer spurred international actions and exhibition about sexual violence.
Abichandani organized a trilogy of exhibitions to inaugurate the Ford Foundation Gallery in 2019. Perilous Bodies, Radical Love and Utopian Imagination centered the visions of BIPoC artists to critical acclaim with 22,000 attendees.
Abichandani‘s work is in the Burger Collection and the Asia Art Archive Collection. She has been a resident of LMCC’s Process Space residency, honored by the Brooklyn Arts Council and received awards from Enfoco, the Foundation for Contemporary Art and FST Studio Projects.