The name Penang is hardly familiar to many Germans. But the street art scene on the Malaysian island is causing a stir. A bicycle and laughing children play a special role.
Dozens of tourists have gathered in front of the red side door of an old Chinese shophouse with some kind of street map in their hands. One mural shows a boy wearing an old military helmet on a motorcycle, looking over his right shoulder at the street.
What’s special: Only the boy is painted, the motorcycle is real. Smartphone cameras click, a man leans against the saddle of the black bike for the perfect photo. “Boy on a bike” is one of the most famous works from the street art scene of Penang in northwest Malaysia.
Street art is popular
Street art is a global phenomenon. The spectrum ranges from illegible graffiti scrawls to the myth of Banksy, whose works dominate auctions worth millions. There is a lot of street art to admire on the island of Penang, with its capital George Town, and it has become a main attraction.
The patina on the historic walls of the UNESCO World Heritage Site George Town has been transformed into a canvas for modern and often interactive art – a fascinating mix that delights visitors from all over the world.
The path to fame
“Street art is what brought Penang onto the world stage,” believes nurse Sudha Kanisan (48), who has spent her entire life on the island. It all started in 2012. At that time, the Lithuanian artist Ernest Zacharevic created his first murals as part of the George Town Cultural Festival.
The works – a mixture of installation and painting – struck a chord and subsequently inspired primarily local artists, who also immortalized themselves on the historic walls. Today George Town looks like one big open-air art gallery.
“In college, I became friends with someone from Penang. One Chinese New Year festival, I came over to see her and hang out,” Zacharevic, now 37, recalled in a 2016 interview with Time Out Penang.
Then he just stayed – a good decision: the series he created during the festival made him famous in one fell swoop – especially the works “Children on Bicycle” and “Boy on Motorcycle”. The BBC later hailed Zacharevic as “Malaysia’s answer to Banksy.”
Famous works
Two children are sitting on an old bicycle, laughing. The little boy clings to his big sister. The same applies here: the children are painted, the bike is real. A woman poses for a snapshot and pretends to push the wheel. The online magazine “Street Art News” described Zacharevic’s unique style: “He removes the restrictions of artistic boundaries and moves freely between the disciplines of oil painting, stencil and spray, installation and sculpture.”
Based on this, the local street artist Louis Gan later created “Brother and sister on a swing”, which shows two laughing siblings on a swing on a half-ruined wall. He installed a real swing next to it. “This is by far the most exciting mural to appear in George Town since Ernest Zacharevic arrived on the scene,” says the Travel Tips Penang website. Also eye-catching are the dozens of wire caricatures that are spread throughout the city and combine history with humor.
A walk through George Town turns into a treasure hunt
Penang, also hailed as the “Pearl of the Orient”, is a colorful mix of different eras, cultures and religions. The island was once an important British trading post in Southeast Asia. Colonial buildings from this period alternate with Chinese shophouses, Buddhist temples, churches and mosques. And everywhere you go, seductive scents of food stalls waft through the tropical air. Penang has been a World Heritage Site since 2008.
Some compare a stroll through George Town to a treasure hunt. But instead of gold and jewels, urban art is sought: there are detailed maps that guide tourists through the labyrinth of alleys. Each work that is located and photographed is checked off like on a checklist. Some of the paintings are so famous that they adorn T-shirts, bags and refrigerator magnets in souvenir shops.
The interesting thing is to understand the story behind each work of art,” says Kirsten Müller, a tourist from Austria. “Sometimes we use the Internet to learn more about the individual images, and sometimes some background is included in the work of art itself.” It The 65-year-old emphasizes that it is fascinating to look at Penang through the eyes of these artistic stories.
It is not uncommon for visitors to have lively conversations with locals to better understand the cultural nuances of street art. The walls of George Town do not divide, they connect. Colorful and cheerful, they build a bridge between yesterday and today – or to put it another way: the colorful brushstrokes have breathed new life into the crumbling patina of Penang.