The Haunting Street Art Adorning Havana’s Oldest Buildings

I have traveled to Havana and I can tell you that there is very little street art. This is partially because paint is hard to get and is expensive. But according to Atlas Obscura, there is on street artist who has enough work on the streets of Havana to command attention.

Here is a short excerpt of the full article-

In Havana, Cuba, street art is relatively rare. The city is full of derelict, sometimes abandoned buildings that in other cities might have been used as canvases for graffiti, but tags or murals are found only infrequently in the Cuban capital. In some neighborhoods, though, haunting figures live on Havana’s walls, the product of a young street art movement, led by just a handful of artists.

One of the most prolific and noted is Yulier Rodriguez, who signs his work Yulier P. His pieces feature alien-like creatures with bulbous heads, sometimes more than one, and large searching eyes. Rodriguez said they are akin to souls or fables. They suffer. They wonder. They might be in pain or in a moment of contemplation. They’re rarely happy, though.

They peer out of their other-world into Havana but they rarely seem to see it, caught up instead in an internal melancholy.