Source: Photograph (2010) by WTL© on site in Havana.
Comments: The contemporary Cuban artist José Fuster (b. 1946 in Cuba) has turned this home of his in Havana into a studio and an elaborate and extended modern work of art. In fact, he has decorated most of the block he lives on in a similar fashion, which means most of his neighbors have agreed to participate in his community art project. On the left you see homes belonging to his neighbors. In the foreground you see tiles a chessboard, chess table, and various chess pieces on his front fence. In the upper right you see various constructions in his yard.
Additional images: See: => Havana #27a; => Havana #27b; => Havana #27c; => Havana #27d.
Humanities question: Knowing that Fuster is an award-winning, internationally famous artist who is favored by the Cuban regime, as a first impression what might this image convey to you about art, artists, and life in Cuba in the late 20th and early 21st centuries?

Image source: Photograph in Fuster; José Fuster. Havana: Ediciones Unión, n.d., p. 15.
Marta Rojas on Fuster: Fuster is much more--in his way of seeing and assuming life, that is her very own art--than the twelve-year-old teenager who happened to be in Cuba on January 1, 1959, and who would be found, twenty-four months afterwards, in full campaign in the Sierra Maestra mountains, teaching peasants to read and write. At that time, a pencil was his combat weapon, a notebook his operations map, a lamp similar to Diogenes', illuminating others with knowledge. (Fuster., p. 11)
Fuster on Fuster : Throughout the four decades of my life as an artist, critics have clased me as a chronicler of my time. I disagree, because I think that an artist should reflect reality in his/her work. We, Cubans, have undergone tough times; but in spite of it all we have never lost "The Joy of Living," and this has always been the main subject in my work. (...) It was in 1996 that I decided to take my art to the streets with the aim of allowing people to take part in my project, and that is how I initiated my preliminary works in the community. At about this time my country was going through an extremely difficult economic juncture that was labeled the "Special Period." That phase affected my work because there was a shortage of construction materials, but in spite of it all I pushed on and took the decision to economically support all the expenditures. In my Community Project I work jointly with my neighbors, I make them accomplices of a sort in my Project: they contribute their ideas, tell me how they would like their houses' accesses to look, and I retain their criteria as a must in my work. (Fuster., pp. 22-23)
Fuster's Web site: Fuster quiquiriquí.