Alumni Innovator

Jennifer Wen Ma

B.F.A. Fine Arts '99

Born in Beijing, Jennifer Wen Ma moved to Oklahoma as a teenager in 1986. After studying painting at Pratt, she launched an interdisciplinary practice bridging media as varied as installation, video, drawing, fashion design, performance, and public art.

One permanent public project that has received much attention is her multimedia faced installation for the Digital Beijing Building, one of the architectural highlights of the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics. Wen Ma was one of seven members in the core creative team for the opening and closing ceremonies of the Beijing Olympics, and the chief designer for visual and special effects. For her role, she won an Emmy for the U.S. broadcast of the ceremony. She now works and lives between New York and Beijing.

Her current work explores Chinese ink as a contemporary medium as seen in this video, which shows Inked Garden for Pier 42, a recent project she did in a public park on Manhattan’s East River.

Text and Production: Bay Brown
Video and Production: Peter Tannenbaum