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Our Founder & Story
In 2022, after struggling like many during the pandemic, our founder, Pooja, took 3-month sabbatical from her finance job in New York City to travel solo across Europe and Asia. As her first extended trip with plenty of free time, she spent much of it exploring the museums and galleries in every city she was in, and very quickly ended up falling completely back in love with the arts. After spending about 5 weeks across Europe, she headed to South Korea.
At some point while traveling around South Korea, Pooja realized that all of the incredible Korean artists she was seeing in museums and galleries there, she was almost never seeing in western ones. It made her think about how growing up in the US, she only really learned about famous European artists like Van Gogh, Picasso, or Dali, or American artists like Jackson Pollock or Andy Warhol. She never learned about well-known Indian artists like Amrita Sher-Gil or SawlaramHaldankar, or South Korean artists like the ones she was now seeing, such as Park Seo-Bo or Kim Whanki. The phrase “you don’t know what you don’t know” kept coming to mind, and she wondered how many other remarkable Asian Pacific Islander (API) artists she had never learned about. That was when the idea for Kala & Jeong sprouted...
After returning home to the US, Pooja repeatedly found Asian & Pacific Islander (API) artists to be largely underrepresented at most venues, and thus began formulating the idea of what she wanted Kala & Jeong to be: in essence, a resource for people around the world to be able to connect and learn more about emerging and well-known API artists and their incredible work, on a platform that spotlights artists of all Asian backgrounds.
Our Mission
Kala & Jeong’s mission was born out a of a desire to shine a spotlight on underrepresented Asian & Pacific Islander (API) artists that exist across the literary, visual, and performing arts spaces. Our focus will be on both emerging and regionally-known API artists that have captured our attention in-person, online, or via travel to local venues, art galleries, or museums.
Our Name
The name “Kala & Jeong” pays homage to the two places that inspired the whole idea - India and South Korea.
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The word “Kala” (कला) pays tribute to our founder’s Indian heritage and is a Sanskrit word used to describe “the arts”. In ancient Indian scriptures, there are references to 64 different “kalas” covering everything from painting and the performance arts, to the art of fashion, fragrance, and more.
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“Jeong” (ì •) is a concept our founder learned about while studying Korean language and culture. It is a Korean cultural philosophy that can mean many things, but in essence has been described as “a growing affection or sense of connection over time”.
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Combined, they honor and pay homage to the heritage that inspired both the name and the idea, and symbolize what we hope to achieve with Kala & Jeong - to spread awareness around talented API artists, so that the spotlight and affection for them and their work continues to
Our Ethos
Our ethos is deeply rooted in the belief that knowledge is power, and that that power can serve a greater purpose in helping to cheer others on and lift them up. But in order to do that, the critical key is that the knowledge has to be accessible. People don’t know what they don’t know. With Kala & Jeong, our aim is to be a central resource for those looking to learn more about API artists in the literary, performing, and visual arts spaces. We plan to keep it straightforward. No fancy art-speak. No art history analysis paralysis. No arrogance. No gatekeeping talent. Our goal is simply to spotlight amazing API artists to the rest of the world – everyone is welcome to learn here. That’s why our motto is “Find. Learn. Explore.”