Bianca Xunise is an Ignatz award-winning cartoonist, author, and educator from Chicago. They attended the University of Illinois at Chicago, where they earned a BFA in 2012.
Xunise began teaching at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago as a lecturer in 2024, after teaching a summer class in 2022. “I feel like working with students kind of keeps my brain, keeps my heart open, it keeps me inspired. I feel like when I’m here, I remember that the world is bigger than my own worldview,” Xunise said.
Xunise described SAIC as a place full of people who are passionate about comics and art, which is something they find exciting.
Xunise began drawing as a child, but they found their way to comics as they got older. They described comics as something they were introduced to by their older brothers. “[My brothers] introduced me to ‘X-Men’ and all that good stuff, and I used to draw jam comics with them where they would kill my characters and bum me out, and then I started drawing comics on my own,” they said.
Their first solo ambition in art making was in school, making drawings of their friends’ crushes for them to paste in their lockers.
Now, Xunise’s process for making comics is a blend of digital and traditional, but they find the distinction between the two very slim. On the subject of using digital processes, Xunise said, “I mean, it’s all using the same process. It’s kind of weird to say digital, because all you’re saying is that you don’t use paper, but you’re still using your arm. It’s just not accumulating more landfill. Each [process] is harmful to the environment in different ways, but they’re still the same process. But I do both.”
Xunise is interested in punk music, and it’s become a big part of their work. “I always kind of talk about music. Music’s a big part of my life. Music was probably, and is probably, will always be my first love,” they said.
Their affinity for the punk scene, and in particular, the Chicago hardcore scene, has been a major influence on their work. They described music and comics as being difficult to mix together, but also a perfect match. Xunise described their perception of punk as “an expression of joyful resistance” and that punk scenes were inherently anti-cop spaces and a way of resisting fascism through music.
Xunise’s longest project, “Punk Rock Karaoke,” combines a lot of their interests, but it wasn’t their most formative work. Around 2016, Xunise had been making slice-of-life comics for the website Hello Giggles. After the murder of Trayvon Martin, Xunise realized they wanted their comics to be more than “just passive memes.” They wanted to use their platform to say something deeper than just relatable experiences, and their work started to shift.
“I started working with the Nib, [after] I won my first Ignatz through my story, ‘Being Black in America,’ and kind of growing from that moment, but again, like music, and my experience of being a Black queer person has kind of always been part of my work, 2016 was like the shift, and that’s when I started making longer form work, and more meaningful work than just quick little memes,” they said.
Xunise is passionate about the Chicago comics community. They have a love for all of the talented people who move through the Chicago comics scene, saying, “So many amazing people come through Chicago, I’m very honored to be a part of the scene.”
While Xunise has worked with larger publishers as a part of their practice, they still love the indie self-publishing scene and foresee self-publishing as a practice that they will continue until the day they die.
