“I’ve been asking myself, ‘What’s the point of art?’” said Esther Kim Varet in a video interview, the day after the United States presidential election.

The day before, not long after she had returned from canvassing for the Kamala Harris campaign in Michigan, Kim Varet, a busy gallery owner, had admitted she was nervous about how close the race looked. After the election had been called for Donald J. Trump, she let slip that even she wasn’t necessarily thinking about art — or its function in society.

Kim Varet’s politics are particularly evident at Various Small Fires, the contemporary art gallery she founded and operates. Based in Hollywood, south of the Los Angeles hills, Various Small Fires focuses on championing artistic voices that Kim Varet feels have been traditionally overlooked by galleries — such as those of Asian, Indigenous, Black and Latino descent.

She opened the gallery in 2012, in an industry historically dominated by white male gatekeepers (such as those running the galleries atop Art Land’s tracker of top contemporary galleries). Now, as she enters her 40s, Kim Varet is preparing to return to Art Basel Miami Beach, a testament to her gallery’s growing reputation.

“I just want to push conversations forward,” she said, of the gallery’s mission.

Kim Varet’s sense of drive has deep roots. “I’m a first-generation Korean American,” she explained, recounting how her grandparents escaped North Korea, and her parents, raised in South Korea, immigrated to Texas, where they became involved with the Southern Baptist Church.

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