Fusterlandia

I hate being a tourist. I like to travel. To see places. To try new things. But I hate doing it under the guise of a tourist. I don’t queue. I try to avoid attractions. But if it’s off-road, offbeat, off-centre, I’ll find it.  Or he will.

We were on the hop-on, hop-off bus in Havana (hopping not recommended by the way as there’s sod all by way of timetable, little by way of signposting, and in a whole day of sporadic waiting, I never once saw the No. 2). The No. 1 is the city tour. We took it because I wanted to see the cemetery and it was as handy a way as any to get there. No. 3 takes you to the beach but we didn’t have long enough in the city to spend a day on the sand. No. 2 is supposed to connect you from No. 1 to the Hemingway Marina. I remain unconvinced.

We were heading to a little neighbourhood in the northern burbs between the Marina and Club Havana. Here, apparently, a Cuban artist by the name of José Fuster, is working wonders in the ‘hood by doing it Gaudi style. I have it on good authority, that every month or so, the man takes a trip abroad and brings back colourful mosaic tiles that he then uses to do up the neighbourhood in what has become known as Fusterlandia.

Marooned in the middle of nowhere waiting for a bus that never appeared, we asked three taxi drivers to take us there. They were either trying it on (extortionate fares) or didn’t know where it was.  A local, unlicensed cab, stopped and said he had no idea where it was but he’d find it. And he did. And we went to Barcelona for a couple of hours.

It was pretty spectacular. Fuster is using the barrio as a massive canvas. He has transformed about houses and parks into something truly gobsmacking. Real people live here. They go to work. They go to school. They play on the streets, drink in the bars, eat in the restaurants. Mad.  Jaimanitas is not a theme park – although being billed as Fusterlandia, you could easily mistake it for one – it’s a neighbourhood. Another type of rejuvenation, different to what’s going on in the Viejo, but a rejuvenation nonetheless.

If you’re lucky, you can sometimes catch the man himself at work. We missed him. He funds this project by selling his own work (I saw a price tag of $10 000 on one piece) and does a roaring trade in relatively inexpensive hand-painted tiles ($30). I came. I saw. And I bought: an original mixed-media piece that I know I’ll end up furnishing a room around.

The 70-year-old grew up in Caibarién, a small fishing village on the south coast of Cuba. As a teen, he had the volunteering spirit, that drive to make his community a better place, working as he did back then on local literacy programmes. He went to art school in Havana from 1963 to 1965 but it was a visit to Barcelona, to Parque Güell, that sealed his style.  The influence of Antoni Gaudí is everywhere you look in the barrio. Quite fantastic.

I am not concerned with classifications or the critics’ disquisitions. My only interest is to create. To those who say that my work is naive, I reply that they are the ones who are naive, because my art is filled with surrealism, and I prefer to define it as postmodern, although I do not like installations, without categorizations or rigid compartmentalisation. My spiritual father is Picasso and my favourite uncle is Gaudi.

La Hababa has a good article on the man, if you’re interested in knowing more. And if you make it to Havana, make the time to visit. We never did get to the Marina.