Magda sent, illustrator
«I was born in Equatorial Guinea and I live in Spain since I was four years old. I am an illustrator and I also teach beautiful arts in two schools. I am doing a primary education master to combine the world of illustration with that of teaching. I am the author of the enlightened album Being black is beautiful».
When did your passion for art begin?
I am very cinephile since childhood and the cinema has always been a fundamental pillar in my life. I think the first movie I saw was The sweeperof Cantinflas. I understand that in Equatorial Guinea it is an icon. From there, in Spain, I loved watching all Disney movies, Harry Potter, Chihiro’s trip, The Lord of the Ringsthose of Pixar … for me the cinema was like a shelter, an evasion. And then painted what I saw in the movies. I invented the continuation of the stories and drew them. I remember that in the school of nuns I went, in plastic we had to draw things according to what we were giving, with the family or with a trip we had done. I started drawing orcs, battles, matches of Quidditchto Harry with the wand …
And what did they tell you?
“How much imagination this girl has!” They never told me that I couldn’t draw it. I drew what I wanted, and I still do it.
You say that for you they were a shelter, an evasion.
Yes. I needed to escape a bit of my family situation and Bullying that suffered at school. Painting and movies served me to escape and forget about the reality of everyday life. I felt protected in that world that welcomed me.
You studied Fine Arts and chose as the topic for your end -of -degree work (TFG) the influence of African art in the West. How do you start interested in this issue?
In Fine Arts, when we give art history we only study painters, sculptors and other white artists. The only non -white people are Baskiat – because we talk about Warhol – and Frida Kalho, who seems to be the only artist woman in this world. It seemed very rare, I was missing something. When I started documenting me for the TFG I exposed it to my tutor and proved me right. I began to investigate and discovered that there were a lot of non -white artists and that most of the European avant -garde art that we know –picasso, Matisse … – drinks a lot about African art.
Which non -white artists have impacted you more?
With the TFG I met Kehinde Wiley, the African -American artist who made the official portrait of Obama, in which he is sitting in a chair with the background coated with flowers. When you see the painting, you would not think that it is the official portrait of the White House. It’s amazing. What this artist does is put people Afro as we are used to seeing bourgeois people in the paintings. Do you see Count Duke of Olivares riding a horse, work of Velázquez? Well, he takes a gang boy from Bronx and puts it that way, with those costumes, with the horse, dressed as Louis XVI … normal people and currents who do not imagine that they can be represented in that way. What he does is bring Afro people to spaces where we would never think they could be. In addition, I love flowers and ninety percent of his work is full of flowers and plays with that duality between the role required to black men of hardness, strength … and the delicacy of flowers, clothes or silk. Break with the stereotypes of Afro people. Lynette Yiadom-Boakye the same. In 2013, he was a Turner finalist, the Top Award for artists, which does not usually fall on racialized people. It was an event in the art world because it was the first time that a racialized person was a finalist. His paintings, starring black people, I love them. It catches the way in which they portray them, color, looks … their works are hypnotic. These artists inspire me. I also want to put people Afro in the center of my works, I have it very clear.
Most of your paintings are portraits in which beauty stands out. I understand that it is very important for you to show it.
Portrait through my eyes and it must be that I see everyone handsome, what am I going to do! (laughs). I tend to see beauty in everything around me. Even I see people who do not feel that way and I can get the beauty they say they don’t. I find beauty in a scar, in some freckles. What you have radiates a beauty in itself that I am able to capture in the work to transmit it to the spectators. There is beauty in anything if you know how to look for it.
As Kehinde Wiley, you also paint many flowers in your portraits.
I like them a lot. It comes to me by the American artist Georgia O’Keffe, who paints flowers on an impressive scale, very closely. She explains that she began to paint the flowers because with the day -to -day hustle people do not stop looking everyday things and wanted people to escape the beauty that flowers have. I am very interested in that, it is true, we are so fast for life that we do not stop to appreciate the small things, as when you go down the street and in a cobblestone you see some seedlings sprouting and you say “how beautiful!” A friend once told me that even the darkest corners and the bloodiest wounds sprout flowers. I liked it. Many times the flowers that Pinto sprout from the body itself, because they have that symbolism of the rebirth.
Let’s talk about Being black is beautifula book for children’s audience with your illustrations and a text written from quotes of personalities such as Mandela, Nina Simone, Maya Angelou or Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie How is born?
The project comes from the editor of the Children’s Section of Planet, which has a mestizo child. At the time the child realized that it was not white, she wanted to explain that nothing happens because it is not like the rest of her classmates, for being different, for having a black part and a white part. Among the project motivations were also the issue of children suffering Bullying Because they are black, the murder of George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter movement. They needed an illustrator and wanted it to be Afro -descendant. As soon as they told me, I told them that I wanted to be the one who did, that they would not look for more.
How did you raise the creative process?
They gave me a series of guidelines although they also left me freedom. What they wanted is that black people appear and that the illustrations were realistic, so I did not have to change my style. I tried to capture different types of people, from babies to the elderly, so that the kids see that there are different types of beauty. There is even an albina person. And I wanted to include flowers in the portraits to extol that beauty. I wanted children to feel it when opening it: “This person is like me!” Racialized children are not accustomed to seeing people like them in books. They wanted them to see that they can go out in a book, that they can be the protagonists, that they can be painted and that they are beautiful. When I was a child, it was unthinkable to see in a book that the protagonists were black people. This book is conceived to be like a kind of mirror, children read it and are seeing faces like their own in the pages.
What answer have you received?
I have arrived above all messages of mothers of Afro adopted or mestizos. There are children who thanks to this book have understood that they are beautiful, regardless of the comments and negative experiences they have had. For example, the six -year -old daughter of a girl I know was having problems at school for comments such as: “I don’t want to play with you because you are black,” and she wondered if being black is a bad thing. After reading the book, what this girl thinks is: “Well yes, I’m black, what?” He has wondered if it was a bad thing, to hug him.
So the book is fulfilling its goal.
I am very clear that I will continue to paint racialized people until I die. It will be my way of giving us visibility. I do not see us in other spaces so, for my part, in my work they will always be. And I want the youngest to see my works. We do not get an idea of how important it is to be represented. If I had this little girl, I would have made such a big difference …
Would you have felt stronger?
Yes, totally. Stronger and more valid. When you are little, the negative comments fit very deep. My main objective is for children to learn to love each other. The pain of not accepting oneself is terrible. One should not go through that when he is little.
Compaginas your facet of illustrator with teaching and, in addition, you are doing workshops with children who have read the book. How is it resulting?
Very enriching. We read the book, ask questions and share their experiences. The book helps them to understand experiences they have suffered. And when they see that the book artist is also black, they are surprised. I think they had never imagined that a person like them could do something like that. And some tell me: “Hey, because I also want to be an artist.”
With her
«This normal watercolor box Winsor is very important for me. Not only is my work tool, but it is my safe place. The painting is the place where I feel more comfortable, safer and freer, where I can do what I want. It is a part of me with which I can’t live».
