With the rehabilitation of the CAC of Guadeloupe, artists on the alert: "Not everyone has the same vision of the future"

Despite her death on April 2, 2024 , the colorful face of Maryse Condé watches over the city of Pointe-à-Pitre, from the facade of the Center for Arts and Culture (CAC) where the Guadeloupean street artist Steek Oner painted her. The building has become an artistic squat, "perhaps the largest exhibition hall in the entire Caribbean," rejoices Fabrice, the unwilling manager of this immense gallery and a long-standing member of the Kòlektif Awtis Rézistans which occupies the premises. Here, the gray walls serve as canvases for artists from all over. Photographs. Paintings. Street art. Sculptures. Everything mixes together in a joyful mess where armchairs and other salvaged objects rub shoulders with poems and quotes on the black condition, love, freedom or the need to create. When Fabrice is asked how many works in total can be found in the building's more than 7,000 m2, he laughs at the question: "I don't know. Maybe 300 or 400. I've never counted."

Formerly a performance hall, the Arts and Culture Center was inaugurated in 1978 before closing in 2009 for renovations and then being abandoned. Construction resumed in 2016, then stopped with the pandemic.