Newtro Arts: LATAM Culture Builders on Web3
Lucasoxx shares the story behind Newtro, a hybrid collective, peer-learning platform, and curatorial laboratory. He explains how the Tezos blockchain provided a space to nuture a spirit of experimentation and provides new opportunities for artists in
Newtro Arts is a living cultural organization rooted in the Latin American tradition of gestión cultural, a practice grounded in community, social studies, and a long-term commitment to sustainable growth. More than a project, it operates as a hybrid collective, a peer-learning platform, and a curatorial laboratory for experimentation with blockchain and digital culture, dedicated to rethinking how artists relate to technology, collaboration, and the networks they inhabit.
The Spirit of Cultural Mediation
At the heart of this tradition lies the figure of the gestor cultural, a facilitator who not only mediates between institutions and communities but also intervenes in shaping social imaginaries, collective will, and identity models. As Alfons Martinell Sempere (2000) notes, cultural management is "the result of a social mandate that professionalizes a significant number of people in response to the needs of a complex society." Víctor Vich (2014) expands this view by proposing that the role must also unsettle institutionalized injustices, denaturalize power relations, and influence the social fabric that sustains everyday cultural practices.
This understanding has been particularly influential in countries like Argentina, where cultural management has been formalized through public programs, specialized training, and a robust policy ecosystem focused on capacity building for cultural mediators. In the Anglosphere, cultural management tends to be absorbed by production companies and marketing agencies, which makes the role of the cultural mediator less visible. Understanding this difference is key to explaining how projects like Newtro emerge and why they stand out in the global Web3 cultural landscape.
Painting with natural inks, textile experimentations, and VJ mapping on a giant Coihue tree during Bosque Gracias Residency Summer 2024, at Patagonia, Argentina.
In decentralized cultural environments, where art is often flattened into market logic or speculative content, this tradition offers a counterpoint. Newtro takes a situated approach, treating culture as a field of negotiation between experience and memory, territory and technology, individual expression and collective meaning.
Rooted in Argentina and now echoing across Latin America and beyond, Newtro was born from a shared impulse to question and creatively engage with blockchain technologies. Its initiatives support artists not only in experimenting with tools such as NFTs and smart contracts, but also in exploring, testing, and understanding their purposes and possibilities. This practice carries forward a regional legacy of experience-based knowledge, bridging artistic creation, critical thinking, education, and grassroots organizing.
Building Community Through Education
Newtro first appeared in 2022 in Buenos Aires, founded by artist and cinema postproducer Santiago Petruzziello. The project began by producing panels and interviews at art and tech conferences, including dialogues with early cryptoartists like Yon Frula, creator of Peaceful Groupies and now Creative Director at Rainbow. These interventions laid the foundation for a longer process of collective inquiry. But a decisive shift happened when Petruzziello connected with Lucasoxx and DisQtible, sparking the launch of a workshop that laid the groundwork for Newtro’s emerging community.
Since early 2023, Newtro has led the onboarding workshop "Art and Web3," designed to guide Spanish speaking artists through the fundamental concepts of crypto and its implications for contemporary cultural practices. With over 12 successful iterations so far, the program integrates live classes, video tutorials, personal assistance, and a curated bibliography, encouraging artists to mint their first artworks on Tezos and explore blockchain's potential from a critical and expressive lens. Each edition ends with a collective conversation featuring an experienced guest artist, fostering dialogue between generations and perspectives. You can find more content about their actions in their Youtube channel.
Carrousel of artworks from the March onboarding workshop, featuring works by HOLY, Francina, Notangra, temica and Ver Clausi
So far in 2025, two editions of the workshop were successfully carried out with the much needed support of the Tezos Foundation, as the workshop has always been free of charge for artists, the first in March and the second in June. These workshops are more than a technical introduction. They serve as an entry point into a living community, shaped through a workshop that has already welcomed over 300 artists. For many participants, this is the first time they find a space where they can develop their artistic identity in dialogue with others, outside of the dominant Web3 narratives and traditional market conditions. By opening up this possibility, Newtro offers not just training, but a sense of belonging, a framework for building collective imagination rooted in the Global South.
Carrousel of artworks from the June onboarding workshop, featuring works by Penny Peligrom, Rita Eme, Cheli Dipa and sod_16
Expanding Horizons: Exhibitions, Collaborations, and New Formats
The final gathering of the second edition was part of a new IRL initiative called The Creator Economy. Currently ongoing, this initiative convenes key voices from the Web3 cultural ecosystem for biweekly sessions that spark dialogue around the urgent challenges faced by digital artists. Produced in alliance with Whabbit and Crecimiento, the event merges talks, workshops, an art fair, and live music, in a space designed to foster genuine exchange, creative experimentation, and meaningful collaboration among participants.
Another highlight of this year was a joint exhibition with S.E.E.D., a Brazilian artists’ collective, that included IRL meetings at the co-work of Crecimiento, collaborative curating and production, a community-led installation, and the co-writing of a shared manifesto. This event also marked the inauguration of Newtro’s first exhibition gallery on objkt.com, after years of activity on the Tezos ecosystem.
Because it was in 2021 when this blockchain offered a fertile and accessible space for digital art, where a growing number of Latin American artists began minting artworks and exchanging knowledge. While Ethereum remained largely inaccessible due to high transaction fees, Tezos nurtured a spirit of experimentation and a sense of cultural agency that still exists and thrives to this day. This welcoming environment enabled Newtro to take its first steps, developing a practice anchored in education, collaboration, and sustainable infrastructure.
The artworks produced during the first wave of workshops in 2023 are exhibited in Newtro’s virtual galleries on Protoworld’s open metaverse built by El Tito. In 2024, they were also featured in an interactive mapping installation that served as a prelude to the exhibition Estados Correlacionados, curated by Jotta.rs, Sky Goodman, and Lucasoxx, in collaboration with RefractionDAO. The event was a celebration of Argentina's Web3 culture, bringing together hundreds of artists and a broader public discovering for the first time an ecosystem deeply rooted in the artistic foundations of Tezos, active and thriving for years.
From virtual metaverse galleries to physical exhibitions, Newtro has partnered with hundreds of artists to build a space rooted in Web3 artists’ culture.
Recently, Newtro began experimenting with new workshop formats centered on specific tools and emerging technologies, as part of the Newtro Inspirational Series, like Mixing Era, an intensive generative AI workshop led by Sulkian and focused on local and open-source models. The final outcome, Fricciones Latentes, was a collective drop exploring the tension between automation and intimacy, randomness and control, and the friction between artistic intention and algorithmic logic. Through personalized workflows, participants engaged AI not just as a tool but as a medium, shaping images that inhabit uncertain suggestive spaces.
Carrousel of artworks from Fricciones Latentes Drop, featuring works by BosqueGracias, nivvvo, Sulkian, Mafin, Fran Mandon, Mote and Yerart
Also, the Sublime Cinema seminar, led by filmmaker and researcher Gustavo Sanabria, felt like a much-needed break from the usual rush to create. Over nine weeks, artists explored a selection of films through a poetic and philosophical lens, drawing from Henri Bergson’s ideas on duration and intuition. Rather than focusing on narrative, the sessions opened a space for shared perception and reflection, where cinema became a tool to explore time, memory, and emotional resonance.
Carrousel of artworks from Sublime Cinema Drop, featuring works by Sartorio Pedro, Melhillo, Lubott, Aempatia and y4gh
Newtro understands culture as an ever-evolving process. Its work goes beyond hosting workshops or launching collective drops; it builds a space where artists, educators, and culture builders can collaborate, learn, and shape the future of onchain culture. From the Tezos ecosystem to physical exhibitions, Newtro highlights the importance of cultural sovereignty and collective meaning-making in Web3. In a world that often prioritizes speed and commodification, the collective embraces patience, care, and collective building, planting seeds for a more open, sustainable, and community-led future shaped by artists and dedicated to artists.