Muralist Kobra sees street art as a lifesaver for poor youth

When he was a boy, Eduardo Kobra went out to play on the outskirts of Sao Paulo with a pencil and sketchbook, when he was a teen he took his spray paint and a hiphop beat, and today, at age 38, he is one of Brazil’s great street artists with an international reputation.

Kobra comes from one of the most rundown, violent districts in Brazil, and his growth as an artist wasn’t easy. Many of his teenage friends ended up in jail or dead as a result of their ties with drugs and crime, but art was his “escape valve.”

He says in no uncertain terms that to be an artist, you don’t have to be born with a silver spoon in your mouth or belong to a certain social class, but to look for and find channels of expression.

Now known as the great Brazilian muralist with works in more than 15 countries, Kobra, who visited an art gallery for the first time when he was 29, is one of the Latin American leaders taking part in a joint project of the Unicef Regional Office for Latin American and the Caribbean, and Spain’s news agency, Agencia Efe.

The project dubbed “25 Leaders, 25 Voices of Childhood” seeks to spotlight the importance of the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child, established 25 years ago on Nov. 20.

In the Pinheiros neighborhood while spraypainting a giant multicolored mural with the faces of musician and composer Chico Buarque and the late writer Ariano Suassuna, Kobro said he envisioned street art as a lifesaver for poor young people with few opportunities and little hope.

QUESTION: How and when did you decide to be a painter?

ANSWER: I was born in a poor neighborhood on the outskirts of the city, where there aren’t many possibilities of education or leisure activities. When I was there it was all very handtomouth, but more or less at age 12 I felt an attraction for what was going on in the streets. I got to know the graffiti painters.

And all that I learned, both good and bad, I learned in the streets, in the hiphop culture. I was arrested three times for painting graffiti. It was a tough beginning.

Q: Your training as a painter was based on street art and not on classical art. That has to do with where you came from. Was there ever a chance to choose between street art and classical art?

A: I’m selftaught. I was almost 30 when I visited my first gallery. I had no access to art but I liked to draw. From the time I was 8, I went out with my sketchbook under my arm. I had the vocation. And I really didn’t have much choice. I don’t know if I chose graffiti or graffiti chose me. It was love at first sight.

Q: Street art is often used to denounce something. Do you think it can also contribute to forming children’s consciences?

A: I know a person who challenged me on that he said that I’m no example for people in the slums, because I’m one of the minority that did well.

But I think just the opposite. I take a lot of pride in my life in the slums where I had to fight for everything easy it was not. A teenager from my neighborhood came the other day and told me I inspired him. Things there are difficult, but not impossible.

Q: Generally in formal education, children in school practice art, but as they grow up the incentive for artistic creation seems to evaporate. Is that right?

A: There’s a lot of pressure they have to deal with. Very often it becomes impossible for kids who draw, who have a talent for art, to develop that gift.

I went to live alone when I was 17. I had to pay my bills and didn’t know where to get the money so I left drawing and painting aside.

Q: So art can be a salvation for the lives of many children in poor neighborhoods?

A: Many friends who painted with me went to jail or died they got mixed up with drugs and crime. For me, art was an escape valve. I coexisted with that situation but didn’t get involved in it, I didn’t let it carry me away.