Artist Talk: Twin Walls & Macro Waves

About the Artists

Jeffrey Yip (Macro Waves Collective)

Co-Founder / Technical Director / Creative Technologist

Jeffrey Yip is an interdisciplinary artist of color based out of Oakland who produces installations and performances with an emphasis on using technology as a tool of creation. He unites the senses as an approach to building experiences, often combining light and sound in physical as well as virtual spaces. Thematically, his art revolves around exploring technology imagined to facilitate healing as a form of radical justice, working collaboratively to create sustainable communities.

Jeffrey is a core member of AGASAN, a multi-phase collaborative project that includes workshops and interactive offerings to address mental wellness. In 2015, Jeffrey co-founded Macro Waves, a creative studio composed of artists of color who specialize in producing immersive experiences through conceptual art, new media, and design. As Technical Director, he leads and oversees all technical aspects of its projects. Currently, Jeffrey is a part of the 2020 YBCA 100 honoree creative cohort mentoring artists from the fellowship program.

Dominic Cheng (Macro Waves Collective)

Founding Member / Project Director / Designer

Dominic Cheng is a conceptual artist and designer based in Huchiun, in unceded Lisjan territory Ohlone Land, in what is present-day Oakland. Through the use of video, new media, and installation art, his work examines the relationship between publicly designed spaces and surveillance, social control, and resistance culture.

Dominic is a founding member, designer, and Project Director with Macro Waves, a creative studio and collective of artists and designers of color focused on producing experiential art and immersive installations. Dominic received a BA in Urban Studies and Planning at San Francisco State University. He has worked as an arts administrator and engaged in creative productions with local cultural institutions, such as Oakland First Fridays Festival, Yerba Buena Gardens Festival, and SOMArts Cultural Center.

Anum Awan (Macro Waves Collective)

Core Member / Experience Designer

Anum Awan is an interaction designer and new media artist born and raised in Lahore, Pakistan, and currently based in Oakland (Ramaytush Ohlone land). They craft mixed-reality experiences by blending physical and digital media centering queer, immigrant, and non-Western narratives. Their work manifests installations, projections, videos, live visuals, and programmed electronics. Anum received a Master’s in Interaction Design from California College of the Arts and a BFA in Graphic Design from Massachusetts College of Art and Design. Anum is a core member of the Oakland-based creative studio Macro Waves. Professionally, they work as a UX Designer at Adobe and are a board member of Gray Area Foundation for the Arts.

Marina Perez-Wong (Twin Walls)

Co-Founder

Marina Perez-Wong is an artist born and raised in San Francisco’s Mission District. She survived rare childhood cancer and spent the first few years of her life in and out of the hospital. It was there that she took to art as a form of communication, self-expression, and escape. Her artistic voice was influenced by her mother, a Bay Area photojournalist who documented the people and events of the 1980s through the lens of the Mission’s diverse artists, writers, muralists, and activists during the 1980s. Using bright colors, contrast, and semi-realistic subject matter, Marina’s work is motivated by the healing of current and generational trauma, community, history, local and global politics, transformation, and education.

She began painting murals in the summer of 2000. Since then she has worked as a muralist and teaching artist throughout the Bay Area and New York City, privately commissioned by the San Francisco Arts Commission, Precita Eyes Muralists, and Groundswell Community Mural Project. She has created murals for a variety of communities and clients including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the San Francisco Giants, Google, Kerry James Marshall, Chase Stadium, the College Board, and the Door NYC. In 2013, she co-founded Twin Walls Mural Company. Marina has a bachelor’s degree from the California College of the Arts.

Elaine Chu (Twin Walls)

Co-Founder

Elaine Chu was born and raised in San Francisco and graduated from the Ruth Asawa School of the Arts High School. She continued to study drawing, painting, and art history at Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore. In 2005, Elaine joined the Philadelphia Mural Arts Program while living in Philadelphia and worked as a mural artist and teaching artist. In 2011, she began working for Precita Eyes Mural Arts Association in San Francisco, training and inspiring her development as an artist under the guidance and mentorship of founder and master muralist Susan Cervantes. Elaine feels most at home painting murals, creating art that is accessible and free for everyone.

Elaine is the co-founder of the mural collaborative Twin Walls Mural Company. Since 2013, they have painted over 30 murals, brightly colored and semi-realistic, using symbology related to nature, women, spirituality, justice, and community to manifest changes they wish to see in the world and heal generational trauma. Following the footsteps of amazing women muralists in the San Francisco Bay Area, Elaine aims to continue to inspire other young women to become future muralists and represent a strong and unique Asian American influence in the street art world.