In 2015 I was in Bogotá and saw a wall painted with a boy playing a trumpet, under the words “Art for Life”. I came home to Aruba with one question: why not here?
San Nicolas was built around a refinery. When the work went, the people went. By then it was called a ghost town, a place tourists were told to avoid. So in 2016 I started inviting artists, asked my neighbours for their walls, and filled empty buildings with pop-up galleries.
Ten years later the town has more than 80 murals, three galleries, a week-long art festival and a visitor center. I run it all through Pure Aruba Events Foundation, together with a small team, volunteers and hundreds of artists.
Art is a mirror and a megaphone. It can bring a street back to life and give a young person a future.The belief ArtisA was founded on
