The Artling

In 2013, Talenia Phua Gajardo was running an interior and design studio and kept running into the same problem: there was no straightforward way to discover and source contemporary art online, least of all from across Asia. Talented artists were working in relative isolation, their reach limited to the galleries and fairs willing to show them. Rather than treat that as a permanent condition of the market, she built the platform she needed - and called it The Artling.

More than a decade later, The Artling has become one of the more recognizable names for sourcing contemporary Asian art online. It curates work from a network of over 6,000 artists and designers across 112 countries, with more than 80,000 artworks available on its site - paintings, sculptures, photography, prints and collectible design. The company pairs that marketplace with an art advisory and trade business that quietly does much of the heavy lifting: sourcing, commissioning and installing art for homes, offices, hotels and property developments.

Gajardo brought an unusual pedigree to the problem. Half Singaporean and half Chilean, she trained in architecture and spent time at Zaha Hadid Architects before starting her own design practice. That background - equal parts spatial thinking and taste - shows up in how The Artling operates: curation and fit, not just catalog size, sit at the center of the business.

The Artling operates on two fronts. The first is a consumer-facing online gallery: a curated e-commerce marketplace where individuals can browse, discover and buy contemporary art and design directly. Artists and galleries join for free, and The Artling earns a commission when a work sells - a simple model in a market long known for opacity around price and provenance.

The second is a business-to-business art advisory and trade operation. Here the customers are interior designers, architects, property developers and hospitality and corporate clients who need the right work for a specific space - often at scale. The Artling's team develops art themes and narratives, handles concept design, commissions original pieces to site specifications, and manages the project through to installation. Its trade program layers in bespoke solutions and trade pricing for professionals.

The Artling's insight is that a large share of art demand comes not from seasoned collectors but from design professionals furnishing real spaces - a hotel lobby, a residential tower, a corporate headquarters. Those buyers face a hard problem: discovering the right artist, verifying quality and provenance, commissioning at the correct scale, and coordinating delivery and installation. The traditional gallery system handles none of this end-to-end, and it rarely serves Asia's artists with global reach.

By combining a curated marketplace with a full advisory and project-management practice, The Artling collapses that friction into a single relationship. Collectors get a filtered, trustworthy place to buy; professionals get a partner that can take a project from a blank wall to an installed commission.

The online art market is large and competitive. Global marketplaces such as Artsy and Saatchi Art list well over a million works between them; others - Singulart, Artspace, Artfinder - fill out the field. The Artling has never tried to be the biggest. Its differentiation is deliberate curation and a clear regional anchor in Asian and Southeast Asian contemporary art, backed by an advisory arm that most pure marketplaces do not operate.

That focus is both the strength and the trade-off. Because the platform leans curated and selective, it can be harder for a brand-new or lesser-known artist to get listed - but collectors and professionals get a filtered set of work they can trust. In a category where authenticity and judgment matter more than sheer volume, being the curator is a defensible position.