Mon – Sat · ArtisA Gallery 9 am – 5 pm · San Nicolas
WhatsApp +297 593 4475Plan your visit
San Nicolas was a fading industrial town, long called a ghost town, a place tourists were told to avoid. In 2016 cultural producer Tito Bolivar founded ArtisA, short for Art is Aruba, with one belief: art is a mirror and a megaphone. It can bring a street back to life, give a young person a future, and give a voice to people who are not heard.
Ten years later the walls of San Nicolas shout colour, the galleries are full and the town is known around the world. But the murals are only the part you can see. Behind them is a foundation that works every week with artists, makers, students, schools and women in prison.
Our vision: to turn San Nicolas into a thriving art district and make Aruba the Art Island of the Caribbean. Our mission: artistic growth, economic opportunity and community pride, by linking art to schools, artists, visitors and the whole community.
San Nicolas was a fading refinery town, long called a ghost town. In 2016 we started the Aruba Mural Festival and the Aruba Art Fair, filling empty buildings with pop-up galleries and bare walls with murals. By 2019 Forbes called San Nicolas the Street Art Capital of the Caribbean. Today more than 80 permanent murals make the town a walkable museum, with 10 to 15 new walls every year.
In 2021 we opened ArtisA Gallery, a home for artist development, exhibitions and market access, with weekly art lessons by Erika Moran and Peter van den Heuvel. When Cosecha closed in 2023 and many makers lost their place to sell, we opened Space21.art. It supports more than 40 artisans with a shop, DIY workshops and year-round visibility, and now has a second home: Space21 Playa.
Since August 2024 artists and makers from Space21 go into KIA, Aruba's women's correctional facility, twice a week for full-day workshops in embroidery, jewellery, textile design and craft. Each woman develops her own design language. Her work is shown at the Aruba Art Fair, walks the ArtFashion runway and is sold through Space21, and every sale goes into her personal reintegration fund.
Our longest-running education programme. Since 2017 every participating school and NGO gets a 1.5 × 1.5 m canvas and paint to answer the year's theme. Since 2025, with Filomena College MAVO, students aged 12 to 18 join weekly after-school workshops in painting, fashion, dance, rap, music, photography and graphic design, then build the Youth Art Fair and walk their own garments at ArtFashion.
Every September San Nicolas becomes one stage: the Mural Festival, ArtTable under the stars, ArtFashion "Fashion with a Cause" and the three-day Aruba Art Fair with more than 100 artists. Each year asks a question. 2025 asked what justice looks like. In 2026, Nature × Mankind: Shape, Shift, Sustain asked how we live with the planet that holds us.
In December 2025 ArtisA took eight Aruban artists to Red Dot Miami, hosted by Perseus Gallery, and launched Nature × Mankind there. In 2026, during the royal visit to Miami, we facilitated two murals at Henry Mack / Little River Elementary School, including the first mural by an Aruban artist in the United States. Not exporting art: exporting identity.
After a year of asking what justice looks like, ArtWeek 2026 moved from questioning to imagining a future of harmony. Launched at Red Dot Miami in December 2025, the theme ran through the Aruba Art Fair, ArtFashion's "Rewilding the Runway", the Youth Art Fair and ArtTable.
It moves the conversation from how do we use this, to how do we belong to this?
Where people and nature coexist, and where they clash: from coral bleaching to urban growth.
What do we owe the planet that holds us? Biodegradable fashion, earth pigments, nature as medium and message.
Ancestral wisdom, indigenous practice and the sacred links between humanity and the earth.
He was 13 when we met him. In 2026 he painted the first Aruban mural in the United States.
Rasheed Lowe was 13 when ArtisA founder Tito Bolivar saw his talent. Our team, with board member Jody Leanes, mentored him until he turned 18. At 15 he painted his first official mural at the Aruba Art Fair. In 2026 he painted Be Inspired by Art in a Miami school.
ArtisA is a foundation. The galleries are free, the murals are public, and our programmes reach students and women in prison who could never pay for them. Without donors, partners and art buyers, none of it continues.
One-time gifts by card. Every gift goes to the programmes above.
Make a donation →Every artwork and MISO piece you buy pays its maker and keeps the foundation going.
Shop the gallery →Sponsor a mural, an ArtWeek event, MISO or the youth programme.
Become a partner →Join us in San Nicolas, also through the European Solidarity Corps.
Get involved →
