“No matter how hard you try to hide, there will always be a light” – Tupac Martir

To wrap up my month digital residency, I want to share with you my next Performative-R piece – Unique.

Unique is a 50-year project, following a single story and how this story can be developed and understood across different media. The novel explores how as humans, our sense of being ‘unique’ has taken us into a path in which sympathy has taken over empathy. Our belief that only we ourselves suffer the way that we suffer has hampered the feeling of unity within the human race.

The graphic novel is formed of 96 drawings divided into 12 chapters, each one portrays different emotions and thoughts that I believe everyone will experience at some point in their life. The first and final chapters are unmovable, while the other ten can be read in any order.

Tupac Martir is a multidisciplinary artist whose work spans the fields of painting, drawing, etching, technology, lighting, projection and video, sound design, music, and composition, as well as choreography and costumes. Vogue has described him as “the visual designer and creative director behind some of the most important events in the world”. He has provided production design, visuals and lighting direction for the likes of Elton John, Beyoncé, Danny Boyle, the Coachella Music & Arts Festival and Serpentine Gallery.

Martir is renowned within the fashion industry and has worked on ground-breaking shows for Alexander McQueen, Moschino, Alexander Wang, and Thomas Tait, among others. His artistic works have been shown across the world, including the Venice Film festival, The Eye Film Museum and Carnegie Hall.