Jo-Lene Ong is an independent curator based in the Netherlands and Malaysia. She teaches at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam and The Royal Academy of Art in The Hague. Ong got her start in the field at the intersection of arts and social activism in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Rooted in an understanding that the climate crisis is a colonial crisis, she is interested in practices that recover indigenous, cultural, and vernacular knowledge. She works with culturally affirming approaches, taking her own background as Southeast Asian beyond an identity and towards a modality. She was a participant of the De Appel Curatorial Program 2017-18. As the De Appel Research Fellow 2018-19, she co-edited Practice Space, a volume gathering different approaches to practising localism by art initiatives around the globe. Past exhibitions include Unpacking the 3 Package Deal (2020, 2019) for Amsterdam Fonds voor de Kunst; Elsewheres Within Here (2019) at Framer Framed, Amsterdam; Brace for Impact (2018) at De Appel, Amsterdam; and SUNSHOWER: Contemporary Art from Southeast Asia from 1980s – Now (2017) at the National Art Centre, Tokyo and Mori Art Museum, Tokyo.