About Art Week Aruba

One week. One city.
Art on every corner.

Every September, San Nicolas, the Street Art Capital of the Caribbean, turns into a living gallery: murals painted live on the streets, a dinner where a hundred people paint together, a runway built on the pavement, and three nights of the Aruba Art Fair in the empty buildings of the town.

10th

Aruba Art Fair in 2027

80+

permanent murals in San Nicolas

700+

artists shown since 2016

100+

artists every fair

events in one week

What Art Week is

Four events that used to stand alone, now one week

Art Week Aruba is the annual festival of ArtisA, short for Art is Aruba, the foundation that has been changing the face of San Nicolas since 2016. For years its signature events ran on their own dates: the Aruba Mural Festival, ArtTable, Art Fashion and the Aruba Art Fair. In 2022 they were brought together into a single week in September, so that a visitor who comes for the runway discovers the murals, a collector at the fair ends up painting at ArtTable, and the whole town fills up for seven days instead of three.

The week opens with the muralists. International and local artists paint new walls across the town while the festival builds up around them, and by the weekend San Nicolas is one open-air gallery with the Aruba Art Fair at its heart.

Each edition carries one theme that runs through every event, from the murals to the garments on the runway. 2024 was Activate: Rebel, March, Change, 2025 Justice, 2026 Nature × Mankind: Shape, Shift, Sustain. For the tenth edition in 2027 the theme is Art · Culture · Movement, the three words Art Week has carried since the start.

The week

Monday to Sunday in San Nicolas

2027: Monday 6 to Sunday 12 September. The fair runs Friday 10 to Sunday 12.

Opens the week

Mural Festival

Muralists from Aruba and abroad turn blank façades into permanent works, with free workshops in mural design and spray technique along the way. Every wall stays: the town has gained 80+ murals this way, and ten to fifteen more are added each year.

Programme →

Monday evening

ArtTable

100+ canvases on the San Nicolas promenade, one per guest, guided by Aruban artists. At the end of the night they join into 1 painting. In the last half hour the canvases are joined edge to edge into one mural of the evening. Wine, tapas and live music included.

ArtTable tickets →

Wednesday evening

Art Fashion

“Fashion with a cause.” Designers and artists turn the theme into wearable art on a runway in the street, with masterclasses and talks around it. In 2026 nine designers from Aruba, Colombia and the Dominican Republic showed at Grot di Lourdes.

Art Fashion tickets →

Friday to Sunday

Aruba Art Fair

The three-night flagship. Empty warehouses and shopfronts become galleries for 100+ local and international artists, with murals, music, film and food in the streets between them. 2027 is the tenth edition: Aruba Art Fair X.

Fair tickets →

The place

San Nicolas, the Street Art Capital of the Caribbean

San Nicolas is Aruba’s second town, at the south-eastern tip of the island, the old refinery town the island calls the Sunrise City. When the refinery stopped, the streets emptied. In 2016 ArtisA invited the first muralists to paint its walls during the first Aruba Art Fair, and the walls kept coming: new ones every September, protected and cared for, with artists from more than ten countries.

In 2019 Forbes called San Nicolas the Street Art Capital of the Caribbean. Today the murals are visited all year round, on foot with Aruba Mural Tours, which start at the ArtisA Gallery on Zeppenfeldstraat, and Art Week is the week when you can watch the next ones being painted.

The story

Ten years, one wall at a time

2016

ArtisA is founded by Tito Bolivar. First Aruba Art Fair and first murals in San Nicolas.

2017

Art Expression starts: a canvas and paint for every school and youth organisation that wants one.

2018

First Youth Art Fair.

2019

Forbes names San Nicolas the Street Art Capital of the Caribbean.

2021

ArtisA Gallery opens, the island’s first space dedicated to artist development and year-round exhibitions.

2022

The events become one festival: Art Week Aruba.

2023

Space21 opens for Aruba’s makers after the closure of Cosecha. Art Fashion theme Unchained.

2024

Activate: Rebel, March, Change. Made Inside starts: craft workshops with the women of KIA, shown at the fair.

2025

Justice. In December ArtisA takes eight Aruban artists to Red Dot Miami and wins the Best Gallery award with Perseus Gallery.

2026

Nature × Mankind. Ninth Aruba Art Fair, Art Fashion at Grot di Lourdes, eighth Mural Festival.

2027

Art · Culture · Movement. Aruba Art Fair X, the tenth edition, 10–12 September.

Who makes it

A foundation, a town, and a lot of volunteers

Art Week is produced by the ArtisA Foundation, a non-profit run from the ArtisA Gallery in San Nicolas. Founder Tito Bolivar is not an artist himself; he came back from Bogotá in 2015 with a question, why not here, and has been curating the walls of San Nicolas ever since. Around him is a small team, the artists of the gallery and of Space21, Filomena College for the youth programme, and every year a group of European Solidarity Corps volunteers who build the festival with their hands.

The festival is made possible by its partners, among them the Aruba Tourism Authority, which has supported the fair since the first edition, the Mondriaan Fonds, the Creative Industries Fund NL, the Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds Caribisch Gebied and Aruba’s Department of Culture. Ticket sales and art sales go back into the artists and the next edition.

Art Week Aruba 2027 · Art · Culture · Movement

One week. One city.Art on every corner.