Cookie Preferences

Art Kelen is built around a small set of commitments to the artists and collectors who use it. One of them is that your activity here is your business, not ours to package and sell on. This page explains what cookies and counters we use, what we deliberately don't, and how to change your mind at any moment.

We need to know which artists are being looked at, which pages are being read, where in the world our readers sit. This tells us what to commission next, which emerging voices are finding an audience, where in the diaspora our work is landing. We do it with a small, self-hosted counter that lives on our own server. No cookie. A short-lived tab token lets us tell apart fresh pageviews from continued reading in the same browsing session — but it doesn't follow you between sessions, isn't stored persistently, and isn't tied to you as a person.

We don't use Google Analytics, Meta's pixel, or any advertising tracker. We don't sell, share, or rent your activity. We don't build a profile of you. We don't run retargeting campaigns. We don't have an advertising business and we never will.

A small number of cookies have to exist for the site to function at all — keeping you signed in, holding the contents of your cart, protecting checkout against form forgery. These are strictly necessary; without them you couldn't actually use Art Kelen. They live only on your device and expire when their job is done.

Two of the categories above are switched off until you turn them on. Remembered preferences keeps your language and currency choices between visits, which most people find convenient but which we won't assume on your behalf. Video embeds lets editorial articles play YouTube and Vimeo content inline, but those players set their own cookies for which we cannot answer. If you'd rather not, articles will show a placeholder you can click through to the original.

When you buy a work, we hand the checkout to Stripe, who set their own cookies for the duration of the transaction. We share with them only what they need to process the payment and verify it isn't fraud. We don't share who you are, what you bought, or anything about your earlier visits with any third party for any purpose other than that.

Your preferences are saved against an anonymous token in your browser, not against you as a person. Clear your browser cookies and the token clears with them — you'll be back to defaults. You can also return to this page at any moment; the toggles always show your current state, and the Privacy & cookies link in the footer of every page is how you find your way back.