Introduction
My name is Savior El Mundo, a.k.a. Make Art. That is my street art name. I’m from New York City, born and raised in Harlem. My story is just too much to tell, so I’ll skip a lot of stuff. I was a professional dancer, into making film, street art, and graffiti because that’s the outlet we have as kids in New York City, and it was our therapy.
The way I got into street art was I wanted to put “make art,” and “make art” simply. I wanted to put it all over the streets ‘cause to me, I want people to make art and never stop making art. You can be an actor, a writer, or any of the arts. I’m going to remind you to make art, and sometimes I’ll write ‘stop b*tching and make art’ cause a lot of people like b*tching and saying ‘well, people don’t like my art, nobody…I can’t be an actor, I can’t…’. No, you can be anything in your life if you put your mind to it, so that’s why I started to write stop ‘b*tching and make art,’ too.
But that’s actually why I did street art as political…It makes you think, and that’s what street art is about. Real street artists, we go out there into the streets and make you think. Like you’ll see our image of something I did, but inside, that image is going to make you think: ‘Why did he do that?’ ‘why did he write that?’ and all of that stuff, you know what I’m saying?
What are the recurring themes in your work?
‘Make art’ is one of them, but I [also] use Frida Kahlo [with] ‘make art’ on her, with my signature. I do my own style of Frida cause Frida was a revolutionary; she was a leader, and I wanted to support more women street artists or women in their need like that, so that’s one of them. I have pop art and street art, I do 3D letters, and I do anything that makes you stand out on the streets. To make you think and then from street art becoming a muralist, becoming…
I’m actually a curator myself, too. I tell a lot of artists, you do all of this for twenty-something years; what’s next? I teach how to learn how to be a curator, how to be an artist, and how to be a businessperson. ‘Cause a lot of people asked me, how did you become an artist?’ So, this sh*t didn’t come in my lap, you had to earn it, you had to go to galleries, you had to socialize with people, say, ‘Hey, my name is Savior, what’s your name?’ ‘Here’s my art.’ You never know who is going to accept you, who is going to like your art and put you in a gallery. I teach a lot of artists that anything is possible.