Wilfredo “Bio” Feliciano is an internationally established artist, taking the world by storm with his world-famous art collective known as TATS CRU “The Mural Kings.” As a master of street art, graffiti, mural design, and fine arts for over 30 years, Bio is one of TATS CRU’s founding members and continues to create vibrant and artistic pieces in group and solo projects featured globally.
Born and raised in the Bronx, Bio always felt drawn to art and expressing himself artistically. Bio grew up in a Puerto Rican household. One of his earliest memories associated with art was when he was in fourth grade. He said, “I was probably in the fourth grade, and the teacher gave us an assignment to create a logo with our initials as a homework project, but I did the project before we even left class.”
Bio remembered being excited about creating art ever since. As a boy, he was often inspired by the comics in the Sunday paper, fascinated by the drawings and letters and always trying to re-create them himself. It wasn’t until he was 14 that he noticed the subways in his hometown.
Growing up in the eighties, there were several subway artists whose work shaped Bio’s love and style for street art. Some of those artists were Seen, Lee, Crash, and Dondi. He remembered seeing what looked like cartoons painted across the trains. Bio said, “All these guys were painting on the subways when I was first starting out, so I looked up to them. I was amazed at the stuff they were doing. It was crazy— the productions and the murals they were actually doing on the side of the subway.”
In the early eighties, Bio fell in love with street art and started gravitating toward other guys who knew as much or a little more about street art than he did, sharing information and learning more about the art form.
In our interview, he recalled how exciting it was to learn more about the culture and what street art was all about. During those formative years for him, between ’80 and ’83, he really started to develop his skill, growing his community of street artists, and making a name for himself.
Street art was more secretive back in the eighties and was more of an underground community, so Bio remembered how hard it was starting off. He always had the motivation to learn as much as he could, always trying to perfect his art and style.
In early ‘81, Bio, along with his fellow street artists, Brim, Mack, and Base, started TAT, presently known as the world-famous art collective, Tats Cru “Mural Kings.” Bio explained they started painting trains and slowly started adding more and more artists to their group, adding up to a dozen members. Some of the earliest members are Nicer, BG183, Ken, Cem2, Raz, Shame125, and Vulcan, to name a few.
In ‘87, TAT stop doing subways and moved their art onto the streets, tagging rooftops and highways. In ‘93, he had the opportunity to meet Fat Joe, now a famous rapper, but was up and coming at the time. He also wrote graffiti and was also from the Bronx, so Fat Joe and the CRU really connected. Fat Joe was in his own crew called the TS or Terror Squad. In ‘94, both crews began collaborating on mural productions, and that’s when their name merged making TATS CRU.
Bio explained that during this time, Terror Squad and his crew TAT were working on a mural for a music video, and they tagged both of their crew’s names: TAT and TS.
“We did some walls, and we wrote TAT and TS, but it was too many Ts. We just dropped one of the T’s and wrote TATS. Then people were saying, ‘Oh, you guys are TATS.’ And we were like, ‘No, it’s like T-A-T, T-S.’ After a while, people just kept saying TATS, so we just kept it. The name was forced on us,” Bio joked, and that’s how TATS CRU was formed!
Since he was friends with Fat Joe, Bio had the opportunity to help Joe promote his album, spending the whole night putting posters and stickers all around the city. Soon after, TATS CRU started doing memorial walls and commercial artwork, painting murals for local businesses, ad agencies, and big-name companies.
Bio recalled how TATS CRU grew over the years, going from tagging subways and highways to making full mural campaigns worldwide. They started out by painting mom-and-pop shops in the neighborhood but soon got recognized to design murals for companies like ABC Carpet and Coca-Cola.
Bio said, “Once we started working with media companies and ad agencies who had bigger accounts, we started finding locations for these murals. Then we realized that if we could do that for these big companies, we could do it for everybody. So, we started securing locations and promoting ourselves as that link between these companies and the streets because they were trying to reach a certain demographic, and we had the ability to put these murals out in the streets since we were finding locations.
“We started doing it in New York,” Bio continued, “but then we started branching out and finding other artists in other cities in the major markets, like LA, Miami, and Chicago. Through our graffiti network, we started reaching out to other artists and having them find locations in their cities. Then, we were telling these companies that we could put together these campaigns throughout the five major markets.”
At that time, there wasn’t any competition, so business was booming. TATS CRU was making a name for themselves and building up their brand; but in 2008, when the economy crashed, a lot of the agencies they were working with unfortunately went under. They were unable to demand the same price for their murals, but since business was great before, they were able to survive, going back to their community and creating for schools and mom-and-pop shops for a while. They were able to ride out the recession and build their business back up.
Now, TATS CRU has been in business for almost 30 years, gaining popularity by sharing their art. They also have artists from around the world, crowning TATS CRU as one of the most important and successful groups in the street art community. TATS CRU has been featured in publications, interviews, movies, music videos, documentaries, and more, inspiring many with their designs. They even collaborated with Bronx Brewery to create a beer called Style Masters recently.
Within the last few years, Bio and TATS CRU have been able to branch into gallery exhibitions, merging graffiti and fine arts in galleries around the world. “A natural evolution,” Bio commented in our interview.
“That’s something that we’ve been fortunate to do so we’re able to exhibit our art in other countries,” he continued.
Bio does group and solo projects, creating pieces all throughout the West Coast, Miami, Boston, Minneapolis, Dallas, New Orleans, New York, France, Germany, Mexico, China, England, Morocco, Columbia, Switzerland, Canada, Thailand, and Saudi Arabia.
In our interview, Bio explained how grateful he is for all the opportunities he’s had to travel because of his art: “We’ve been fortunate that through our art we’ve been able to see the world and experience different cultures.”
He also loves the community he’s been able to build and be a part of. In our interview, Bio talked about the first time he ever traveled internationally: “It was probably like 1985 or ‘86, and my first trip was to England. I just remember the sounds, the street signs, and driving on the opposite side of the street— everything was just so different. But what I found was that we had so much in common with a lot of the people, even though things were different.
“We made some lifelong friends; like we now are going on 30 years of friendship with Goldie, who became a music star in England and worldwide doing jungle music, drums, and base, and still tours the world today.” Bio then went on to explain how when he got married in 2018, Goldie connected them with a wedding planner in Thailand for their destination wedding. Since Goldie has a house out there, he even organized an amazing wedding dinner for Bio and his new bride.
Traveling has been one of Bio’s favorite parts of being an international artist. He said, “Traveling changes you. I no longer have that mentality of my hood, my block, and it’s weird because I grew up in Bronx River projects, 174th Street. You think you know a lot, but when you travel, you’re able to see beyond that. When you start traveling outside of your world or your neighborhood, you realize that the world is a huge place and there’s so much going on that you haven’t really seen anything.
“I don’t take any of it for granted. There are times I just think about how different my life has been just because of art. It’s just an experience. I know I’m fortunate to have that opportunity and have the ability to do art.”
One of Bio’s favorite parts about being an artist is that he can make a living from his art. He said, “That’s the thing about living your life as an artist: there are no guarantees. You could be at the top of your game today, and then tomorrow everything dries up. So, you either reinvent yourself or you figure out a way to come back again, you know? I’ve learned to ride the highs and the lows of living life as an artist.”
This has been the most rewarding part of Bio’s career as an artist: “Being able to meet other people from different cultures. I remember this one experience that was pretty cool. I went to Bogata, Columbia to visit this elementary school, and the young kids knew about my art and who I was. But it’s good to see that cause as the person doing it, you don’t see the effects of what you’re doing because you’re in it. It’s just another day for you.
“I’ve met people throughout the years,” Bio continued, “and when people tell you their story of how you affected them with your art, that’s very rewarding.”
Recently Bio’s been working on solo and group projects, focusing on canvas work and bigger projects with TATS CRU. He said, “I just continue to enjoy what I do.”
Follow Bio’s Instagram to keep up with his artistic journey here.
