Annalisa has lived in Cuba for 8 years. Although the island is now her second home, she notes that on her first visit she did not completely fall in love with the place. But its people, customs and culture were the elements that made her two-year stay become definitive.
For her, there is no other place in the world like Old Havana. A place where her family, in 2013, decided to make a small investment and open a restaurant named “Café Bohemia.” The following year, she came with the aim of helping with the family business and escaping the economic crisis that was getting worse and worse in Italy, particularly hitting the arts sector in which she worked.
Gao Habana was born
The Covid-19 did not allow the Café to remain open. Unable to solve the problem, Anna dusted off her sewing machine and started making face masks for her entire family.
“In Italy I was a fashion designer and made historical costumes for theater and film. The pandemic made me realize that I had a lot of undeveloped ideas. I began to draw, design and be inspired by all the unused scraps of fabric I had at home,” Annalisa explains.
Thus, with homemade resources and a lot of heart, Gao Habana was born: a small enterprise that through popular sayings put on bags, wallets, T-shirts, face masks and many other items, aspires to become a more ambitious business in the future.
“The idea of Gao… is to be a store where you can find all kinds of handmade, Cuban and native products. I will not only be making them myself, but also countless artists from all over the archipelago, who will contribute to keeping the store stocked,” she tells us.
One of the main objectives of this project is to implement the use of objects 100% locally produced in Cuba. Leather and natural fiber handbags, yarey (a type of palm) articles, household items. Coffee, tobacco and chocolate are some of the products Annalisa wants to include in Gao Habana. She says they will have a unique and exclusive hallmark, as there will be no mass production. Each piece will be different.
Surviving in Cuba
For Annalisa, living in Cuba was a challenge. Not being fluent in Spanish, there were many stumbling blocks in the first months. Old Havana was her school. Her experiences in her local neighborhood, the conversations with neighbors and the Havana routine were the inspiration for the art that she captures in each of Gao Habana’s garments.
“At first they began to overcharge me in many places because of my accent. They knew I was a foreigner. Every time I went down Teniente Rey Street, the harassment was constant. Until I discovered something that identified Cubans in the area: they were always carrying items and bags in their hands. Then I started to do the same, until everyone got used to it and even started to mistake me for a woman born in the east, from Guantánamo,” she says with a laugh.
Annalisa is Italian, but living here for so many years means she also thinks of Cuba as her home.
“Gao is one’s home. In Italy they teach you one thing when you are little: home is the most important thing, because it is where your family is, your roots, your heart; it is where you grow, learn and in the end you part with it to decipher the world, but you will always need to come back.”
