Alumni Ivan McGill has become the first recipient of the EXP Experimental Comics Research Residency Grant, a program framed within the FINESTRES–Elisava Chair for Research and Experimentation in Comics (CREC). With this selection, McGill launches an unprecedented research line in Spain: a one-year residency that positions comics as a research tool and as a language capable of generating critical thinking, academic analysis, and new modes of visual knowledge.

Over the course of the year, McGill will develop new methodologies and formats connecting comics with other creative, technological, and academic fields. His approach—blending illustration, digital art, formal experimentation, and hybrid visual languages—aligns naturally with the Chair’s mission: to rethink the medium, question its conventions, and reveal its potential for reading, organizing, and reinterpreting the complexities of contemporary life.

In this conversation, Ivan discusses the influences that shaped his understanding of visual narrative, his view of comics as an open laboratory, and the role of technology in his storytelling. He also revisits his time in the Master’s in Illustration and Visual Narrative at Elisava, a formative year that shaped his experimental mindset and laid the foundations for his current artistic practice.

Your work moves between illustration, comics, and digital art. What led you to cross these languages? Which references have most influenced your understanding of visual narrative?

I started drawing and making comics at a very young age, and they quickly became a comfortable medium for expressing myself — a language I had already internalized. When it came time to choose my studies, I decided to pursue Fine Arts. I wanted to explore new disciplines and, summarizing an entire degree in one sentence, that’s where I learned to always maintain coherence between form and content in any project, regardless of its nature.

Once I discovered the breadth and the more experimental branches of comics, I reconnected with the medium. Today, it is the language I begin from and think through, although I’m always open to exploring new ways of storytelling, finding the best format for each message, and playing with the possibilities that come from mixing disciplines and visual languages.

My biggest influences come from the most independent scenes of the fields I explore: underground comics, self-publishing, fanzines — that breeding ground where the most daring experiments emerge — and, on the other hand, the independent videogame scene. Even though I’m not much of a gamer, I find it incredibly inspiring to see more and more projects try to redefine the medium and rethink the habits and clichés inherited from its early stages.

In short, I’m inspired by any work that blurs the boundaries of its own language: videogames considered works of art, artworks you can play, comics you wouldn’t even know how to classify.

In your case, comics seem more like a laboratory than a closed format. What interests you about their experimental nature?

I see comics as a container capable of assimilating information of very different kinds and reorganizing it efficiently, using a reading rhythm that, for me, is key to understanding any message. This peculiar language, with such an elusive definition, feels perfect for dealing with the reality we inhabit — one overflowing with information and images, real or fictional. Comics become a powerful tool to approach that reality, reorganize it, read it, look at it, and understand it.

What role does technology —animation, videogames, interactivity— play in your storytelling?

I always try to expand the ways we can tell stories, experiment with comics, and push their boundaries. A comic can be seen as an architecture of images and text; it can be understood as a space for the reader to physically traverse. Technology allows me to translate this idea of interactive reading space into virtual environments, broadening the possibilities for experimentation and questioning the book-object as the only access point to the medium.

Ultimately, technology helps me discover new ways to create, read, and navigate stories.

Since your participation in projects like Búnker24 or GRAF, how do you see today’s independent scene?

Both collective publications and comic/self-publishing festivals are great tools for diagnosing the state of the independent scene. In recent years, I’ve seen a huge wave of professionalization that naturally clashes with the underground spirit — but it’s a completely natural process, and it’s positive that artists are, little by little, becoming less precarious.

From a stylistic perspective, I think we should be very proud of the landscape around us, both in Catalonia and Spain. Our comic history has allowed us to develop a unique relationship between what could be defined as underground and mainstream. We have an incredible number of authors who feel free to twist and push this expressive medium, something perfectly reflected in the work of major creators such as Marc Torices, Ana Galvañ, or Marta Cartu.

You were recently awarded the first EXP Experimental Comics Research Residency. What does this recognition mean to you?

It’s extraordinary to be able to devote an entire year to researching comics. It’s the perfect opportunity to revisit studies I began long ago, update them, and push them toward new paradigms. It’s also an honor to share the Chair with Mery Cuesta and Marta Cartu, who help me approach, discuss, and question topics — ultimately helping me think about comics.

How do you remember your time in the Master’s in Illustration and Comics at Elisava? Was there any moment or project that shaped your current path?

I remember it as a very sweet year, full of meeting new people: great professional peers, key figures from the Barcelona comics scene, and discovering —in depth— Fatbottom Books, the Máquina Total workshop, and the entire ecosystem of wonderful eccentrics surrounding them.

Perhaps the most pivotal moment during the master’s was the first classes with maestro Francesc Ruiz. His course on deconstructing comics truly broke any preconceived framework I had, no matter how “experimental” I thought I was.

In conclusion, from the Master’s I take with me great friends like Pablo Saulo, with whom I’ve collaborated on several projects; extremely enriching experiences like participating in the GRAF festival (where I am now part of the team); and, above all, a way of thinking and working with comics that has given me the foundation to keep exploring the medium with a critical and experimental mindset.