The Conclusion You’ll Draw about George Town, Malaysia? It’s a Work of Art
George Town isn’t the capital of Malaysia; Kuala Lumpur is. Nor is it the biggest metro area, again lagging Kuala Lumpur. But it is one of the most fascinating and multicultural cities I’ve ever seen, a fusion of Malay, Chinese, Indian and European architecture, food and culture.
It’s a UNESCO World Heritage site, thanks to its “unique architectural and cultural landscape without parallel anywhere in East and Southeast Asia.” It’s also a film location, starring in “Crazy Rich Asians,” among other movies.
But the city named for King George III of England is also the street art capital of Asia, home to dozens of quirky sculptures and murals. In Penang, Malaysia’s tropical island state and home of George Town, art isn’t just in museums, galleries and houses. Its surprises lurk around almost every corner.
I had fun hunting down the most famous and learned a lot in the process. Fifty-two witty, whimsical wire sculptures affixed to building walls, with explanatory text, use caricatures to tell tidbits of local history, customs, food, legends and culture clashes in Penang.
In one, a bespectacled young tourist at an Apple computer in a café orders a “tall double shot decaf espresso,” blissfully unaware the man is preparing a traditional thick Malaysian coffee (kopi o kau) instead.
A street food vendor makes tok-tok noodles (named because hawkers make a tok-tok sound to signal their presence) in another black steel-rod sculpture. A “parrot astrologer” predicts the future using green parakeets as legend says early south Indian astrologers did.
Four British men smile in “Happy Hour Here We Come.” Britain’s East India Co. formed the Straits Settlements (Penang, Singapore and Malacca) in 1826 to protect the trade route to China. A European man in a top hat shakes hands with Ah Quee, a wealthy Chinese immigrant who made his fortune in tin mining in 19th-century Malaysia, as he wonders how to pronounce the Chinese name.
This wire sculpture on Lebuh Ah Quee is near Pinang Peranakan Mansion, his beautifully preserved green home where the collection of jewelry, gold, beaded and embroidered slippers and art show off his wealth.
Celebrity shoe designer Jimmy Choo, a Penang native, is a young boy proudly showing off a stiletto heel he designed as his master shoemaker teacher and a customer look on, beaming.
In 2009, the Penang state government announced a contest called “Marking George Town” to honor the UNESCO designation from the previous year. Winner Sculpture at Work, a Kuala Lumpur design studio, used cartoonists, comics artists and designers to humorously reveal bits of Penang history. Among the artists: Reggie Lee, a syndicated cartoonist for decades for The Star, Malaysia’s biggest daily newspaper, and Julian Kim (“Lefty”), a comics publisher. Studio creative director Tang Mun Kian created 31 wire sculptures.
A ripple effect inspired many street murals in the city, some incorporating objects, such as bicycles, for a 3D effect. The best-known mural is two smiling children sitting on a real bicycle; people line up for photos. I saw it seemingly everywhere: on tote bags, T-shirts, souvenirs, postcards, notecards and in books.
Ernest Zacharevic, a street artist from Lithuania, painted the mural in in 2012 in a series showcasing daily life in the city. Zacharevic, a tourist, reportedly was overjoyed when his street murals, always removed at home in Vilnius, were met with smiles and thank-yous in George Town. He decided to stay.
His other murals feature a boy on a real motorcycle against a reddish door and a realistically painted smiling small boy walking a cartoon-like dinosaur, both on Lebuh Ah Quee. His mural of a trishaw driver sitting inside a real trishaw waiting for customers replicated a scene I saw daily.
The hugely popular Zacharevic murals sparked more street murals by a global array of artists. Fourteen artists from the U.S., United Kingdom, Denmark, Australia, Lithuania, Singapore and Malaysia created murals and sculptures in 2014 for the Urban Xchange project.
“We want to create an artistic international cultural exchange so that local artists can learn from international artists who will be here for the project while the international artists will get exposure to the local culture and art scene,” says Gabija Grusaite, then curator of Hin Bus Depot. This art studio complex in an ex-bus station conceived the project with Urban Nation, a Berlin street art museum.
I saw “The Indian Boatman,” a mural of a turbaned Indian man standing on a boat on Lorong Stewart in the Little India district, created by a Russian artist; a blue-clad girl sitting on a turtle by Zacharevic and an Argentine artist; and a boy and girl on a real swing on Lebuh (Street) Chulia, by Malaysian artist Louis Gan.
The many cat murals piqued my curiosity. Then I heard about the 101 Lost Kittens project that encourages Penang artists to raise awareness of the plight of stray cats. Among the poignant feline murals: “Love Me Like Your Fortune Cat” (a gray-and-white cat surrounded by multiple “beckoning cats,” a symbol of good fortune) on Lebuh Armenian, and “Please Care & Bathe Me” (two kittens peek from a bin) in a narrow lane off Lebuh Victoria.