72 Artists Magazine October 2019
a nonprofit organization to return to
the former Portuguese colonies, plus
East Timor. I started an illustrated
book project called Vozes de Nós (Our
Voices), traveling again to Angola,
Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau, Cape
Verde, São Tomé and Príncipe, and
East Timor.”
In these countries, Corbel regularly
coordinated illustration and writing
workshops in community-run schools
and conducted interviews with his
young students, collecting their
stories and artwork they made for
the books that followed.start to draw, and I teach them a few
techniques like cutting paper, paint-
ing with gouache and compiling short
stories,” he says. Then he guides them
in creating art that relates to their
daily lives. “I tell them that I’m there
to do a book, so I want to see their life
at school, at home or in the streets
selling items or doing what they do—
the things they know,” Corbel says.
He feels a bond with his students
after spending entire days with them,
sometimes for several weeks. They’re
always eager to learn, and some are
in tears when it’s over. “By the end of
the workshop, it’s almost like they’re
your kids,” says Corbel, who has five
children of his own. He shares more
techniques with the students who
work exceptionally well. “I feel sad
that many of them can’t pursue art
as a career path,” Corbel says. “Under
different conditions, they could have
a professional life doing illustration.”
But, he says, “just like many of my
MICA students have no idea about life
in Africa, these children have no idea
about the illustration market outside
of Africa. It’s like two different worlds.”
Corbel realized the greater impact of
what he was doing in the communities
he visited. “One project was to promote
a nonprofit, normally quite unknown,
that works with children in East Timor
who really need help,” he says. The
book was intended to help raise money
and gain support from other institu-
tions, the state and larger nonprofits.
Some of the children Corbel taught
came from especially tough situations.
Over time, once the children became
comfortable with him as they created
art together, Corbel inquired more
about what brought them there so that
he could share insights about their
lives in the book. “We couldn’t publish
some of the stories because they were
too strong,” he says.This gouache portrait features
a Cape Verdean farmer in the
Roça Soledade, a plantation
on São Tomé and Príncipe. It
appeared in Lenin Oil, a novel
by Pedro Rosa Mendes that was
released in 2006 by Portuguese
publisher Dom Quixote.TEACHING IN
A DIFFERENT WORLD
The workshops Corbel taught were
attended by young people ages 8 to- “Particularly in Africa, it’s only the
kids who normally draw,” he says. “In
all of these countries, I know adults
who can draw very well, but some-
times they’re just lacking materials or
are doing something else because they
have to make a living.” Corbel brings
with him colored paper, tempera and
gouache, scissors and other simple
supplies and lets the kids play for the
first week. “In the beginning, we just