Cuba's artists await a flood of travellers

Havana

KADIR Lopez was working in his studio at his elegant home here when the doorbell rang. It was Will Smith and his wife, Jada Pinkett Smith.

"I had no idea they were coming," said Lopez, whose work incorporates salvaged American signs and ads that were torn down after Fidel Castro's 1959 revolution.

About an hour and US$45,000 later, Smith had bought "Coca Cola-Galiano", an 8-by-4-foot Coca-Cola sign on which Lopez had superimposed a 1950s photograph of what was once one of the most bustling commercial streets in Havana.

A ye…