This piece originally appeard in Burnaway, an online magazine that celebrates art in the American South and the Caribbean. This article is part of a collaboration between Burnaway and the Oxford American. Look for monthly co-published articles and content in the coming year.

_Decked in curling painted iron evoking the nineteenth century Marché de Fer in Port-au-Prince, the Little Haiti Cultural Complex (LHCC) sits at the center of the Miami neighborhood that shares its name. The building sticks out among the pastel painted mix of art galleries and Haitian American-owned businesses that surround it, including the oldest Creole/French specialty bookstore in the city, though the block recently lost the baby blue record store and Caribbean grocery store that occupied its southern corner due to the neglect of the buildings by longtime landlord Mallory Kederer.¹ For now, that space is an empty lot, though it will soon become a Wynwood Yard-esque food truck pop up called Lakou.²

Artist Serge Toussaint was commissioned by Midgard Group, a real estate investment firm, which purchased a number of properties in the area in 2022, to create a mural for the recently exposed blank wall.³ His powerful image links Haiti’s current crisis to the revolution against slavery at the founding of the country in 1804. Two flags, bound hands, and twinned messages of “ANMWEYYY” call for help. “A lot of my work is in Creole but the images translate . . . everyone passing can understand that wall,” Serge said. Standing on the sidewalk of NE 59th Street, the work faces another mural by Toussaint, honoring local leaders including Viter and Maria Juste, who coined the neighborhood’s name and campaigned for its official designation as such from the city.⁴

Toussaint’s place-based work can be found throughout Miami—his Little Havana chickens and Miami World Center vintage postcard mural downtown are as inseparable from their respective neighborhoods as the scenes he’s painted on and around NE 2nd Avenue. But in this area, years of his work depicting Haiti’s history and America’s present layer on top of each other to create an urban environment that feels like a man’s love letter to one place and a call for help for another. After the use of excessive force by US Border Patrol on Haitian immigrants crossing the Texas-Mexico border created a national controversy in 2021, Toussaint painted a similar scene on the western wall of the former Cayard’s Grocery at 1 NW 62nd Street, which was the first Haitian grocery store in the city when it opened in 1977.⁵ The building has since been completely redeveloped and is now awaiting a new tenant, but the larger than life figures in his since painted-over 2021 mural called to car passengers with “SHAME ON YOU” in large letters.⁶ In the corner, an outline of Texas dripped blood. A few dozen blocks south in the famed street art museum Wynwood Walls, international muralists compete for the street-facing wall space that Serge’s work occupied, unchallenged in this area for years, before the building was redeveloped and the mural removed.

_As buildings change hands, more and more of Toussaint’s iconic murals are lost. Artist Eddie Arroyo often paints the changing urban environment in Little Haiti, including its many real estate signs and development notices.⁷ He has created multiple pieces focusing on Toussaint’s lost work around the area, including a series addressing the redevelopment of 5825 NE 2nd Avenue. Depicting this corner, which is in eyesight of the LHCC from 2016 to 2020, the paintings follow the bright orange storefront of a longstanding Haitian bakery and family-owned business known as Cafe Creole. There, Toussaint painted a mural of local rapper and community activist, Mecca AKA Grimo, dressed as Henri Christophe, a leader of the Haitian Revolution and former Haitian president alongside the words “STAND UP, LITTLE HAITI.” As the business closes, Arroyo’s paintings show the transition as Toussaint’s art is blanked out with grey paint and defaced by other graffiti. By 2019, the building became an almost unrecognizable white box topped by a halo of foreboding chicken wire. In the painting from 2020, the Biden Harris campaign covered it with signs.

Toussaint started his painting career on canvases and trained at the School of Visual Art in New York City. While visiting family in the 90s, he realized that businesses in the multilingual neighborhood of Little Haiti would benefit from signs and murals that advertised their services with images as well as words. His first mural was on the side of his uncle’s furniture store at 54th Street and NE 2nd Avenue; admiration for the work brought commissions from business owners, which eventually led him to begin his series of murals depicting figures from Haiti’s history. His aim with the murals is to educate local youth and connect them with their heritage, which may not be taught in schools. “I get a lot of commissions from businesses but my work about Haiti, those are my passion pieces. I make those with permission of the owner because I have a message,” he said.⁸ He always uses traditional painting methods instead of spray paint, and it can take him two to four days to finish a piece. “These traditional methods take time. Before you know it, they paint it off, and it’s not a good feeling,” he shared. Over the past thirty years, his style has become inseparable from the character of Little Haiti for most who have spent time here, though they may not know the artist by name. As a man who understands the power of advertising, his insistence on branding the area as Little Haiti in his public mural projects feels like its own resistance from external rebranding of the neighborhood. 

_For his own part, Toussaint has recently returned to painting on canvases and foraged wood from the neighborhood as a way to extend his practice. Dale Zine in the Design District recently held a solo show of his works, followed by a larger exhibition at Laundromat Art Space this September, which sits across the street from many of his murals on NE 2nd Avenue. His paintings are full of puns and witty commentary on escapism as depicted on the bodega bought labels of “Newpot Cigarettes,” “Pepsi Serge,” “Seven up yours,” or a classic bottle of Corona beer. “It’s not just the items, when I paint them I’m playing with what they are and inserting myself to make people laugh,” Serge explained.⁹ “I always like to make fun in my work. What you see is not really what the painting is about, it’s totally different . . . Some people see it and think I can’t spell but it’s playing with signs and what these items are.”

_These recent shows are self-referential, and bring viewers into the convenience stores Toussaint spent decades advertising. The artist has also recreated some of his most well known murals like the painting on the side of the Strawberry Food Market, whose hot dogs and Miami sports logos are repainted in situ. Even as the painting on the physical wall is transformed by weather, time, and Miami’s cycles of development, his canvas captures something about the community in the moment.

_As the recent irreplaceable collapse of the DuPuis Pharmacy building mere blocks up the street shows, a lot of history in Little Haiti is being lost or quite literally painted over.¹⁰ Many of Toussaint’s murals are on private property and are difficult to protect, but the city could take action to preserve and collect as much of Toussaint’s work as possible to ensure that it is not lost in the coming years as multiple major development projects are set to transform the area.

Toussaint is hopeful that the galleries and arts organizations that are moving in will look to the area’s history and prioritize elevating emerging and established Haitian artists as they fill their new residencies and programs. In support of this effort, Toussaint previously taught free art classes called the Big Brother Art School out of the LHCC for a time, and knows there is creative energy in the community.¹¹ “As long as I am around, there will be Haitian art and artists everywhere in this area,” Serge said.

In February of 2023, the LHCC was hit by an unsafe structure ordinance due to roofing leaks and mold from improper drainage, which caused the building to temporarily close. Advocates including LHCC former director Qunyatta Warren cited decades of neglect from the city, ultimately prompting his resignation due to “systemic” issues.¹² Though the complex re-opened earlier this month, it took the city more than a year to address the unsafe structure violation, depriving the Haitian American community of a central gathering space.¹³ Toussaint is certain that LHCC will fully reopen and be a part of the creative patchwork taking shape in the neighborhood. After all, its curling roof is as integral to the neighborhood as Toussaint’s street art. Recently, he was asked by the design team at Grand Theft Auto VI: Vice City, a highly anticipated video game recreating a fictionalized lawless Miami cityscape street by street, to share depictions of his work in order to use them in the game’s representation of the area. Regardless of what happens on the street, this block will be Toussaint’s museum in digital perpetuity.

[1] Andres Viglucci, ‘High anxiety’ in Miami’s Little Haiti, after developers snap up properties at Big Auction, Miami Herald, January 22, 2023. https://www.miamiherald.com/news/business/real-estate-news/article271057807.html.

[2] Andres Viglucci, “A New Little Haiti Visitor Center and Garden Hosts Visitors | Miami Herald.” Miami Herald, August 15, 2024. https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/miami-dade/article290898479.html.

[3]  Ibid.

[4] Monica Uszerowicz, “In Miami’s Little Haiti, a Muralist Fights Gentrification One Wall at a Time.” Hyperallergic, October 5, 2016. https://hyperallergic.com/321133/in-miamis-little-haiti-a-muralist-fights-gentrification-one-wall-at-a-time/.

[5] The Associated Press. “The Agents on Horseback Who Chased Migrants Used Unnecessary Force, a Report Finds.” NPR, July 9, 2022. https://www.npr.org/2022/07/09/1110658557/unnecessary-force-border-patrol-agents-rio-grande.

[6] Linda Bladhom, “A Cook’s - and Diner’s - Tour of Miami.” Miami Herald. September 22, 2005. 

[7] Isabel Ling, “Eddie Arroyo’s Stirring Paintings of Protest Start with Community | Artsy.” Artsy, March 3, 2022. https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-eddie-arroyos-stirring-paintings-protest-start-community. 

[8] Interview with the artist, September 13, 2024.

[9] Interview with the artist, September 13, 2024.

[10] The Miami Herald Editorial Board. “Another Piece of Miami History Dies with Sudden Demolition.” Miami Herald, January 24, 2024. https://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/editorials/article284654210.html.

[11] “Serge Toussaint.” Florida Department of State. Accessed October 29, 2024. https://dos.fl.gov/cultural/programs/florida-folklife-program/folk-heritage-awards/list-of-past-recipients/serge-toussaint/.

[12] C. Isaiah Smalls, II. “Little Haiti Cultural Complex Director Resigns over ‘Systemic’ Issues.” Miami Herald, July 8, 2024. https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/miami-dade/article289851709.html.

[13] Romero, Jimena. “After Years of Neglect, the Little Haiti Cultural Complex Is Getting Needed Repairs.” WLRN, October 21, 2024. https://www.wlrn.org/arts-culture/2024-10-17/little-haiti-cultural-complex-repairs.