Colombian artist Juan Salazar, also known as Judasaca, fuses art, NFTs, and technology to create immersive experiences that redefine visual art. His distinctive creations have been exhibited in leading venues around the world. In an exclusive interview, Salazar shares his journey with Colombia One.
Salazar is a marketing and international business professional with more than 15 years of experience in the field. While his formal artistic career began in 2018, some collectors trace his earliest works back to 2014.
This path took shape while pursuing a master’s degree in Barcelona, where his connection with local artists inspired him to fully embrace art. Back in Bogota and immersed in the city’s creative scene through San Felipe’s art district (in the north of Bogota), Salazar inaugurated his first solo exhibition in 2020.
“I not only managed to exhibit but also sold a piece at that first show,” he recalls. With his motivation fired up, he continued betting on the artistic path. In 2021, Salazar participated in his first international exhibition, where he connected with the world of crypto art, NFTs, and blockchain.
Colombian artist Judasaca pushes boundaries in art with NFTs
NFTs, or non-fungible tokens, represent a new way of owning and trading digital art through blockchain technology. Each NFT acts as a unique digital certificate that verifies the originality and ownership of a work. For artists like Salazar, this innovation opened new possibilities:
“When I came back to Colombia, extremely motivated by this exhibition, I created my first NFT collection, which had five editions. I sold it in less than a day. That showed me that maybe this was also the path to start showcasing my work and reaching, through art, an international audience — or even, as I see it today, a global one,” he explains.
In 2021, after returning to Bogota, he joined his first international NFT exhibition — a digital show held in Panama — marking the beginning of his global journey: “I realized it wasn’t just about selling or interacting in a digital market — it was about exhibiting and expanding the reach of my art across borders,” he says.
By late 2022, he followed international NFT movements in cities such as New York, Paris, and Miami, studying how artists were taking their work to new heights. Later on, Salazar became part of an international artistic circuit — one where the boundary between the digital and the physical worlds increasingly fades.
His new reality highlighted his adaptability and contemporary vision as an artist. In early 2023, Salazar was invited to showcase his art in New York — a milestone he calls a turning point in his career. His work was featured on the giant screens of Times Square as part of a global NFT exhibition.
“We were no longer just exhibiting our works digitally in a private event — we were connecting with a massive audience. For an entire day, we took over the screens of New York, showcasing our pieces and receiving that highlight as participating artists. It revealed a completely different dynamic to us,” he recalls.
Collaboration and global reach in Judasaca’s colorful journey
Salazar’s journey has also been shaped by collaboration. Together with his close friends Yuseph Zapata (YuZapata) and Lucas Zapata (Luko), he founded an artistic collective called The Art Cartel. “As Colombians, the word cartel often carries a negative meaning abroad,” he explains. “We wanted to reclaim it — to turn it into something positive, a symbol of creativity and community. After all, the word ‘art’ is right there inside ‘cartel’, in both English and Spanish,” he adds.
The collective was invited to NFT NYC 2024 and 2025, this time not only to exhibit but to give a talk before hundreds of attendees in New York. They shared their experience connecting art and technology through augmented and virtual reality, building immersive bridges between traditional and digital creation.
“These interactions have shown us the great potential of NFTs and how those of us who come from traditional art — since I come from painting physical canvases — can begin to find opportunities in the world of NFTs,” the artist says.
Salazar’s work has traveled across the globe, reaching Miami Art Week, Art Basel, Portugal, Finland, Japan, Madrid, Mexico, and Costa Rica, among others. His growing international presence underscores his role as a digital innovator and his unrestrained, defiant artistic proposal.
Recreating pop culture through emotion and immersive art
Judasaca’s artistic universe is built around transformation — the belief that “nothing stays the same.” Through this lens, he reimagines icons of pop culture such as Mickey Mouse, Snoopy, and Woodstock, taking them out of their familiar narratives and placing them in new settings.
His work lately invites viewers to look beyond nostalgia and discover emotions, contradictions, and reflections that echoed Salazar’s life.
“If the viewer takes the time to pause — to look a little beyond the surface — they realize there is a message behind it. Since my latest collection, I’ve started painting more of my emotions and how they are reflected in these cultural icons that shaped our childhood. Seeing them here now, we think, ‘Wow, I’m no longer five years old.’ Nothing stays the same,” he reflects.
Judasaca merges his background in marketing with his artistic instinct, playing with animated icons on the canvas, challenging permanence over time. The result takes it further: a hybrid body of work that bridges the physical and virtual worlds.
His paintings, often infused with augmented or digital elements, illustrate a world in flux, where even the icons that shaped our imagination are forced to evolve. “I play with art and technology to create experiences that go beyond the canvas — and beyond the screen,” he says.
Crypto art, virtual reality and blockchain unlock new worlds
Salazar emphasizes the role of community in the international reception of his work. “In the Web3 art world, or crypto art, incredibly interesting interactions emerge through community support,” he explains. For him, these networks provide more than exposure — they are spaces where artists connect and collaborate on a global scale.
Building on his commitment to community, Salazar is a member of One Love ArtDAO, a decentralized organization that promotes artists worldwide. He also helped create Chromaverse, a platform where artists can showcase their work in both physical and digital galleries, enhanced with immersive virtual reality experiences.
In 2024, Salazar and other Latin American artists were selected for 10×10 Blockchain, a project showcasing 10 artists on the Bitcoin blockchain. “Being part of this allowed us, especially as Latin American artists, to reach a global market, sell our work, and gain recognition that can be challenging in emerging markets where art collecting is just taking off,” he says.
These experiences underscore how his bold approach — merging classic painting techniques with immersive digital experiences — has introduced his vision to a global audience. By leveraging NFTs, VR exhibitions, and community networks, Salazar has created new opportunities for Colombian art to thrive on the world stage.