ABBD alumni Kin Nguien and AJ Velasco have come together to create their company, kinaj.co, where we can view all of their latest work. They plan to collaborate with artists and combine the use of dance, film, acting and music along with other interests people are passionate about. With the mantra: experiment, collaborate and create in mind they will show us their journey through intention and passion.
ABBD: What is kinaj? Can you tell us a little about yourselves and your partnership?
AJ: Kinaj is our creative company, it is our individual names put together, Kin & AJ. The name was used by a mutual friend Reet Roy, he threw out the name Kinaj during one of our collabs. We wanted to dance together and present our work collectively so we decided to make Kinaj.co.
ABBD: What does this portfolio represent?
Kin: We go by the mantra: experiment, collaborate and create. We like working with different media arts like film, dance, acting and music and wanted to work with different artists. We wanted to create Kinaj to experiment together and collaborate with different artists and their goals. It doesn’t just include art but also sports or cars or whatever someone is passionate about since we are so passionate about dance. We wanted to be ourselves through our creative journey and experimentation.
ABBD:What sparked your motivation to create this digital portfolio and what is your overall intention?
AJ: ABBD sparked our motivation! After our experience with ABBD we really wanted to create and dance together but wanted to eliminate the process of posting content separately. We planned to create and do more work together so we decided to make a collective instagram account and company so all the work could go there. Our overall intention is to collaborate, experiment, to fail and try new things, to grow to share our work and put that all on repeat.
ABBD: What content can followers expect? (elaborate more on the process like with "Why not me")
Kin: Whatever we feel like creating in the moment! We want to stay present with us, with the world and the people around us. For example, we want to produce more concepts and short films as well as commercials and music videos, but not limited to those. Whatever comes to mind we want to create it, we always start with intention and purpose and build from there. The intention of “Why Not Me” was to dissolve our COVID blues and wanted to make something just to rest and have fun. So we will create more content like that and much more.
ABBD: Tell us about the logo and the meaning behind it?
AJ: We decided on two individual circles to symbolize our individuality, but that the two circles meet together for collaboration. The circles also symbolize how everything comes full circle. The colors represent our personalities. Amber is a warm radiant color with energy. It has vibrance and can promote feelings such as happiness and inspire boldness. In color psychology, amber symbolizes vitality, confidence, and safety. For people, they can have a temper, but they generally are ones seeking to cheer up the room and find reasons to smile. Our other shade is teal. Teal blends blue’s tranquil stability with green's optimism and healing properties. Teal is a color of restfulness and mental and spiritual balance. It’s a calm shade that has natural dignity. Teal is elegant and encourages calm introspectiveness and reflective breath. I’m more of an Amber type of person and Kin is teal. Without trying to go too deep, our names put together is kinaj. That’s how we came up with it!
ABBD: Are there any lessons/tools you gained from your experience in ABBD that helped or inspired you to create kinaj.co?
Kin: Sooooooo much!!! So much actually. After we both finished ABBD, we took a little bit of time to just reflect on what happened because there was so much information. Some of the mantras we really connected to from Sorah were:
Strive for Excellence.
Create something that is of good quality.
Quality over quantity. Quality doesn't mean it has to be expensive, or super crazy, or perfect. It can even be the quality of your intention.
Master your craft. You have to be good at what you are doing. That motivated us to train more, learn more, study more. I’ve been learning things on the side that are not really related to dance, but are still really helpful for dance, and AJ has been doing the same.
Be unapologetically you. That’s us, we love being quirky! We’re like why are we hiding this?!?
If you believe in it 100%, then there’s no reason why you can’t do it. I feel really strongly about kinaj. I like the idea of collaboration and creating things. Even if we fail at something, it’s still growth and we’re still growing.
Create what you wish existed. This is why we did kinaj. We were like, I wish we could do more things together, so we created what we wish existed. It was scary though. It sounds super easy when we talk about it, but we finally did it.
This course gave us lots of affirmations. It also taught us how to stay on top of our sh*t, like being organized, developing a proper plan, and the importance of having a financial plan. Through ABBD we were also provided a lot of introspective work. The individual one on one’s with Sorah helped us realize our worth as people. It pushed us to look into our capabilities differently rather than through an imposter syndrome lens. We found a better understanding of our own identities as people. We learned a lot of things, THANK YOU SORAH! We’re ready for the alumni course!
ABBD: What’s next/what can we expect from you in the future?
AJ: Kin and I have been planning a lot of artistic projects that we want to get out in a more organized fashion. As well as figuring out more on budget and how we can finance those projects so that they are coming out at the best quality that we can produce at that moment and time. We want to work towards training and growing more so that we can provide education and creative programs within our own community/spaces and eventually hope to work with people outside of our towns when it’s safe. In reality, more of us being our weird, dorky, phunny, mindful, badass selves. Just sharing our work and hopefully people will enjoy that and get to keep connecting with people.
Kin: We haven’t finalized it yet, but we hope to work with a youth organization. We want to hel[ guide them towards creation and art,and just make sure they are headed in the right direction. It would be a big responsibility, but if we just trust ourselves, we feel we would have an impact.
Kin & AJ invite you to follow along as they embark on their new journey with kinaj.co! Their digital portfolio showcases their latest creations while giving a sneak peak into their creative process. Driven by their love for experimentation and collaboration, this artistic duo has an endless amount of possibility when it comes to creating what they wish existed. Kin & AJ strive for excellence by continuously educating themselves, providing quality not quantity, and unapologetically embracing who they are. A future aspiration for kinaj is to provide education through creative programs for the youth and within their community. Kinaj was heavily motivated by ABBD & Sorah’s mantra, create what you wish existed. To see more of what they wish existed, follow their journey on their instagram page, @kinaj.co.