Kalaija Mallery is a visual artist, researcher and community liaison. She works in response to notions of liberation and aesthetic irony, and is interested in the formation of underground religious groups and fringe-communities. She started Third Room in 2017 as a space for experimental exhibitions and diy-programming for young and underrepresented artists in Portland, OR. She is co-founder of “You Are Here”, a publication platform that centralized visual artist’s writing and criticism. She has exhibited work in Portland, Seattle, St. Louis, Chicago, New York and Beijing. Kalaija now lives in St. Louis, where she works as acting manager for The Luminary and is a member of MONACO, a cooperatively run gallery. She recently co-lead The Human Way, a free, virtual 12-week residency for artists around the globe to define and practice communal-care, with Prem Krishnamurthy and Home-Cooking.
“The feeling of being ‘apart together’ is an exceptional situation, of sharing something important or mutually withdrawing from the rest of the world and rejecting the usual norms, retaining its magic beyond the duration of the individual game.” – Ray Oldenburg, The Great Good Place