Meet Elaine Chu and Marina Perez-Wong | Muralists

We had the good fortune of connecting with Elaine Chu and Marina Perez-Wong and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Elaine Chu and Marina Perez-Wong, is there something that you feel is most responsible for your success?
We’re not sure that there is one “most important factor.” There are a few things always happening simultaneously in our partnership that make us what we are. Firstly, we share a lot of the same core values. We work towards similar goals that focus on the well being of our community and ourselves as women of color and artists / spiritually conscious beings. We also place great importance on legacy. The idea that there are people who came before us who have fought for us to be able to stand as we do and that we here in the present have to continue to pave the path for the next generation to move us forward. We are successful because our partnership is not about ego. It’s not “my section” or “my idea” but OUR wall, OUR concepts and the “our” we’re talking about is always much greater than just the two of us. We love working together and together we bring our strengths to the team. It is so rare to find someone who just knows you so well and we feel lucky to have found one another.

Can you open up a bit about your work and career? We’re big fans and we’d love for our community to learn more about your work.
Choosing to be an artist is taking a risk, but we both know ourselves and becoming muralists was a way to share our skills with our community and the world. We knew that if we worked hard and continued to challenge ourselves with larger walls and themes it would be worth it. One of our most challenging years was when we painted over 16 murals while working other jobs. Marina was teaching at Oakland School for the Arts and Elaine was waiting tables and doing administrative work at Precita Eyes Muralists. We didn’t sleep much. Often times projects overlapped and we had to rush from project to project, but all that hustling paid off because now we can set our own timelines and be more selective about projects and our involvement. We have grown and learned so much about running a business, ourselves and collaborating with one another. We feel that we are in a great place in our careers, we have a clearer vision of what we want to paint and the messages that we want to convey. As far as subject matter in our work, we realize that it is also full of risk. Not everyone will understand or appreciate your perspective as an artist or collective. You won’t make everyone happy, but sometimes that’s the point. That being said, we both have made a commitment to create positive change and to reflect community in our work, so it’s well worth the risk.

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
Precita Eyes Muralists Association! Our mentor and the founder of Precita Eyes is Susan Cervantes and she has painted murals in the Bay Area for over 45 years. She has not only guided us through the process of painting murals but showed us how important it is for us to involve the community we are painting for. Precita Eyes Muralists is an mural organization in the heart of San Francisco’s Mission District and has painted hundreds of community murals and fostered the development of numerous well known artists.

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